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.


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


Library Journal
"a solid and suspenseful tale around the framework of records and diaries to reveal an obscure woman"


Donna Marchetti, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A woman who deserved a place in history."


San Diego Union Tribune
"A gripping page-turner of a read."


Washington Post Book World
"Niven convincingly shows Blackjack is every inch a hero, the book succeeds as a sure-footed novelization of her forgotten story."


Book Description
From the author of The Ice Master comes the remarkable true story of a young Inuit woman who survived six months alone on a desolate, uninhabited Arctic island. In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman -- who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband -- conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished. Following her triumphant return to civilization, the international press proclaimed her the female Robinson Crusoe. But whatever stories the press turned out came from the imaginations of reporters: Ada Blackjack refused to speak to anyone about her horrific two years in the Arctic. Only on one occasion -- after charges were published falsely accusing her of causing the death of one her companions -- did she speak up for herself. Jennifer Niven has created an absorbing, compelling history of this remarkable woman, taking full advantage of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son. Ada Blackjack is more than a rugged tale of a woman battling the elements to survive in the frozen north -- it is the story of a hero.


About the Author
Jennifer Niven's first book, The Ice Master, was named one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the Year 2000 by Entertainment Weekly. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer, Niven and The Ice Master have appeared in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Outside, the New York Times, and Writer's Digest, to name a few, and have been featured in full-length documentaries on Dateline NBC and the Discovery Channel. Translated into eight languages, The Ice Master has been nominated for numerous honors and was awarded Italy's prestigious Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002.


Excerpted from Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"I must stay alive. I will live." (Ada Blackjack)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When twenty-three-year-old Inuit Ada Blackjack signed on as a seamstress for a top-secret Arctic expedition, her goal was simple: to earn money in order to provide for her young son. She and four men set out into the far North together in September 1921, but as winter set in, the expedition was beset by hardship, starvation, and tragedy. When Ada found her way back to civilization two years later, she was the expedition's sole survivor.

Ada Blackjack's gripping tale of her survival in the wild, and of the chaos and upheaval that attended her return to the world, comprises one of the most amazing untold adventures of the twentieth century. Drawing on Ada's never-before-seen diaries, bestselling author Jennifer Niven brings to vivid life the true story of a woman whose courage and determination defied society's expectations and made her an unlikely-and until now, unheralded-hero.

FROM THE CRITICS

Donna Marchetti - Cleveland Plain Dealer

A woman who deserved a place in history.

The Washington Post

Niven convincingly shows that Blackjack is every inch a folk hero, and the book succeeds as a sure-footed novelization of her forgotten story, spiked with occasional references to original sources -- including her diary -- that Niven recovered. An extensive fifth section of the book takes on another project: how Blackjack's story played. As Niven makes her way through the fog of bad press -- at one point a New York paper accused Blackjack of murder -- she becomes less narrator than critic, and Ada Blackjack evolves from an engrossing fireside yarn to an equally engrossing parsing of legal and media machinations. — Brad Wieners

Washington Post Book World

Niven convincingly shows Blackjack is every inch a hero, the book succeeds as a sure-footed novelization of her forgotten story.

Library Journal

A solid and suspenseful tale around the framework of records and diaries to reveal an obscure woman￯﾿ﾽs accidental heroism.

Publishers Weekly