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full advantage of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son. 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. 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.
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.įollowing her triumphant return to civilization, the international press proclaimed her the female Robinson Crusoe. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. Blackjack, who only took the job as the expedition's cook to pay for her son's tuberculosis treatment, turns out to be the most unlikely of heroines, but also one of the most admirable.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. Jennifer Niven uses contemporary documents and Blackjack's own diary to reconstruct the often terrifying events of those two years, events that were both tightly managed and exploited afterward by the expedition's sponsor, who played up the glamour of Arctic exploration and the valor of his men while suppressing Blackjack's account of their desperate resort to cannibalism.
In 1921, in a vainglorious, frankly nutty bid to claim the territory for Canada (which didn't want it), four men and one woman-Ada Blackjack, a young, hard-drinking Inuit woman -set out for Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic. One of the greatest Arctic (mis)adventure stories you've never heard of and a wonderful foil to the more familiar derring-do of Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen.
ILLUSTRATION: Courtesy of Jennifer Nivenġ.
A 1921 expedition left Ada Blackjack (center) stranded for two years in the Arctic.
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