When Isabel Mendes left Brazil for London the dictatorship under which she had grown up was coming to an end. Instead, she arrived during Thatcher's crushing of the miners' strike, resonating with repressions left behind. Engaged in new work and a different culture she changed. Choices arose which distanced her from her origins in ways she never expected. Intellectually and love hungry, she became the partner of a high-flying academic, leading to a shared life in the United States, where they had a daughter, and later in England to where they returned.

Now, Isabel is retired. She has had an academic career. Her mother is dying. She has never wanted to erase her Brazilian family from her life, but her four siblings act as though she has cut ties with them and their history. As her mother dies and leaves her thirty-five years of letters between London, Boston, Leeds, and Brazil, the archive provides a guide for her memories of choices, risks, fear, loneliness, and courage.

Not to Fall on Iceis the story of a woman remembering and accounting for the strangeness of her place in divergent cultures, changing times, and family connections.