Beginner's pluck: Retired doctor Geraldine Osborne 

Atmospheric memoir sees couple take their three small children to tiny Arctic settlement in 1989, from where they adventured across the frozen sea

Geraldine Osborne: Has ideas for a second book and they are all to do with travel.

Geraldine has always had itchy feet.

“Yet as a child we never went anywhere,” she says.

Her plans to be a career woman who never married were scuppered in her third year of her university medical training when she met an artist, Danny, who was preparing for the Irish Arctic Expedition: “We married and moved to Tralee, where I worked until after our third child was born, then we decided the time was right for the Arctic and went to the tiny Inuit settlement of Grise Fiord. The trip was designed for the children.”

On their return, living in the Beara Peninsula, Geraldine worked as a locum for GPs, and then in public health with the Southern Health Board. But the Arctic still beckoned.

“Danny took the children back a few times, and after two years travelling from Beara to Cork, away from home a lot, I accepted a job in the Arctic, setting up and working in the Department of Health in the new territory of Nunavut,” she says. “I stayed for 12 years, and the two youngest children went to high school there.”

They returned to Beara in 2014: “I worked for the GP out-of-hours service South Doc for a few years and did some local locum work until I retired two years ago.”

Who is Geraldine Osborne?

Date of birth: 1957 in Newbridge, Co Kildare.

Education: Holy Family Convent in Newbridge; University College Dublin, medicine; MPH in public health.

Home: Beara Peninsula.

Family: Husband Danny; children Tempie, Orla, and Oisin; grandchildren Sufyaan, Maya Rosa, Abdullah, Greta, Aminah, and Aven.

The day job: Retired doctor.

In another life: “I’d have been a writer.”

Favourite writers: Toni Morrison; Claire Keegan; Wendy Erskine; Doireann Ni Ghroifa; George Saunders.

Second book: “I have some ideas. They’re all to do with travel.”

Top tip: “Make a routine and write every day.”

Website: www.geraldineosborne.com Instagram; @geraldineosborne

The Debut

Somewhere Cold. 

Mercier Press, €19.99

This wonderfully atmospheric memoir covers the year — 1989 — that Geraldine and Danny took their three small children to a tiny Arctic settlement, over 1,000km north of the Arctic Circle, from where they adventured across the frozen sea.

The Verdict

A remarkable tale as Geraldine balanced her maternal instincts with her sense of adventure.

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