Ada BlackJack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic [Paperback]

Jennifer Niven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2004

Now in paperback, the gripping and inspiring tale of a woman's survival alone in the Arctic.

In 1921, four men and one woman ventured deep into the Arctic. Two years later, only one returned.

When 23-year-old Inuit Ada Blackjack signed on as a seamstress for a top-secret Arctic expedition, her goal was simple: earn money and find a husband. But her terrifying experiences -- both in the wild and back in civilization -- comprise one of the most amazing untold adventures of the 20th century. Based on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Ada's never-before-seen diaries, bestselling author Jennifer Niven narrates this true story of an unheralded woman who became an unlikely hero.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The beauty of Niven's tale (after The Ice Master) reveals itself slowly, in hard-to-find bits and pieces, mirroring the piecemeal dawning of dread that blanketed the book's five protagonists one winter in 1923 on a bleak Arctic island. The explorers four young white men from the U.S. and Canada and Ada, a 23-year-old Inuit woman set out under a Canadian flag to claim a barren rock in the tundra north of the new Soviet Union for the British Empire. But with a lack of proper funding; a grandstanding, do-nothing Svengali of a leader; and an inexperienced crew, the mission was doomed from the start. Niven's hero is the slight, shy Blackjack, who, though neither as worldly wise as her companions nor as self-sufficient, learns to take care of herself and a dying member of her party after the team is trapped by ice for almost two years and the three others decide to cross the frozen ocean and make for Siberia, never to be seen again. By trapping foxes, hunting seals and dodging polar bears, Blackjack fights for her life and for the future of her ailing son, whom she left back home in Alaska, and for whose health-care expenses she agreed to take the trip. When she returns home as the only survivor, the ignoble jockeying for her attention and money by the press, her rescuer and the disreputable mission chief (who sat out the trip) melds with the clamor of city life (in Seattle and San Francisco), leaving both the reader and Blackjack near-nostalgic for the creaking ice floes and the slow rhythms of life in the northern frozen wastelands. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Niven's first book, The Ice Master (2000), was a thrilling chronicle of an Arctic exploration mission gone horribly awry. In many ways, Ada Blackjack is a follow-up, as several of the same characters and problems recur. Vilhjalmur Steffanson, the scientist whose carelessness was largely responsible for the ill-fated voyage of the Karluk, once again embarks on a haphazard mission. This time, his aim is to send a colonizing party to frozen Wrangel Island, intending to claim it for Canada. Four eager young men volunteer for the trip and try to hire Eskimos to hunt, sew, and cook for them, but only one signs up: 23-year-old Ada Blackjack. The group manages to survive on Wrangel for a year, but then an expected supply ship fails to reach them, and their situation quickly becomes dire. Three of the men set off for Siberia to get help, leaving an ailing colleague and Ada to fend for themselves. Using the diaries of the men and Ada, Niven vividly re-creates the frozen land, the struggles of the group, and Ada's ups and downs after her return. This exhilarating account is essential reading for adventure-story fans. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (November 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078688746X
• ISBN-13: 978-0786887460
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #118,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > History > Australia & Oceania > Polar Regions
  • #47 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Native American

More About the Author

Jennifer Niven's first book, The Ice Master, was released in November 2000 and named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year by Entertainment Weekly. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer, Jennifer has ten different publishers in ten separate countries, and the book has been translated into eight languages, including German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Danish, and Icelandic.

Jennifer and The Ice Master have appeared in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Talk, Glamour, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, The London Daily Mail, The London Times, and Writer's Digest, among others. Dateline NBC, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel have featured The Ice Master and Jennifer in hour-long documentaries, she and the book have appeared frequently on the BBC, and the book has been the subject of numerous German, Canadian, and British television documentaries. The Ice Master has been nominated for awards by the American Library Association and Book Sense, and received Italy's esteemed Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002.

Jennifer's second book, Ada Blackjack -- an inspiring true story of the woman the press called "the female Robinson Crusoe" -- was released in November 2003, was a Book Sense Top Ten Pick, has been optioned for the movies, was recently translated into Chinese, French, and Estonian.

Jennifer's third book and first novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive (based on the Emmy Award-winning film of the same name), was released July 2009 by Penguin/Plume. Her fourth book, a memoir -- The Aqua-Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town -- was published in February 2010 by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, and was optioned by Warner Brothers as a television series. Jennifer recently finished work on her fifth book, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, which will be released by Penguin/Plume in September 2011.

She is currently at work on books six and seven, the third and fourth volumes of the Velva Jean series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Survivor, December 18, 2004

By 

Gail Moore "avid reader" (vancouver canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ada BlackJack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic (Paperback)

Absorbing account of an Inuit woman who was the sole survivor of a tragic Arctic expedition and her four male companions who did not make it. Born Ada Delutuk in 1898, when she was eight she was taken in by Methodist missionaries in Nome and talk to read, write, sew and cook. At sixteen she married Jack Blackjack, was divorced at 21, one son out of 3 children survived, but she was unable to care for him because of his tuberculosis. She was persuaded to accompany a group of young men on a land claims expedition to Wrangle Island, a desolate place above the Arctic circle between Canada and Siberia, to cook and sew for them. For Ada the money is good and will enable her to support her son she is promised the mission will be for one year only and that two other Eskimo families will accompany them, but they abandon the mission at the last moment.

This mission had been organized by Vilhjalmur Steffanson, an irresponsible publicity seeker who influenced the young men to go, in their eyes Steffanson was a hero. It was his opinion that it was as easy to live in Arctic as anywhere else, nothing to it, though he himself had never done it, and had already led a disastrous mission once before, he had abandoned his crew and men had died.

Ada and her companions set out in September 1921, under supplied but even so they survived. After a year though the relief crew and ship promised by Steffanson did not arrive and then things became more desperate as supplies were too low to survive another winter. It was decided that Ada would stay with one of the men too sick to travel and the other three would strike out across the ice for the Siberian coast When the ship finally did arrive in 1923, Ada was alone.

The author has done an incredible job of taking a dry event from the past and making it come to life. This is a great historical novel and I have put her book "The Ice Master" on my list of books I want. There are numerous excerpts from newspaper articles written at the time and letters written between the families left behind. I loved Ada's story of The Lady in the Moon, and found it striking that she was able to survive under formidable conditions but had trouble functioning in a city. Her life of drinking, TB and broken marriages is sad, but she still shines through as an inspiration and a survivor.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable read, November 20, 2003

By 

O. Zecht (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic (Hardcover)

Like so many others I've devoured every book on polar exploration that I can get my hands on. I was a big fan of Niven's Ice Master and knew I wanted to read whatever came next from her. Then here came Ada Blackjack, the most unforgettable hero to ever walk out of the Arctic. The fact that she's a woman in a (largely) man's world, that she lacked all knowledge of polar survival, and that she was the only one to walk away from a horrific expedition (after teaching herself all the skills needed to survive) makes her compelling enough, but Niven's story of this obscure, inspiring Eskimo woman transcends the adventure genre and introduces us to a simple, real-life, unexceptional woman who became movingly, unforgettably exceptional.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heart-wrenching heroics of an Inuit woman, June 29, 2004

By 

Doug Tennant (NE Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic (Hardcover)

Ada Blackjack reads like a documentary and can be a bit dry at times as it really tells the greater story of the doomed Wrangel Island Expedition of the Arctic. But the deeper story of Ada Blackjack, the lone survivor of the expedition, is riveting. Her simple faith and love for her son gives her the strength to endure unimaginable hardship. This woman should not be forgotten, nor should the folly of the men who pioneered the expedition go unremembered. Kudos to author Niven.