In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive twenty-five-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 a 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full advantage of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son.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.
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Jennifer Niven’s first book, The Ice Master, was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year in 2000 by Entertainment Weekly. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer, she has ten different publishers in ten separate countries, and The Ice Master has been translated into eight languages. Jennifer and her work 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 in hour-long documentaries, and it has been the subject of numerous German, Canadian, and British television programs.
Laural Merlington is an audiobook narrator with over two hundred titles to her credit and a winner of multiple Earphones Awards. An Audie Award nominee, she has also directed over one hundred audiobooks. She has performed and directed for thirty years in theaters throughout the country. In addition to her extensive theater and voice-over work, she teaches college in her home state of Michigan.