Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic

Written by Jennifer Niven

Narrated by Laural Merlington

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full advantage of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son.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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705236765

Jennifer Niven

Jennifer Niven is the #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of thirteen books, fiction and nonfiction, including the massive breakout All the Bright Places, which she also adapted for film. Her award-winning books have been translated into more than seventy-five languages and have sold upward of 3.5 million copies worldwide. Jennifer has loved television and film her whole life and has been lucky enough to develop projects with Netflix, Sony, ABC and Warner Bros. She divides her time between coastal Georgia and Los Angeles with her husband and literary cats.

Reviews for Ada Blackjack

[brenda joseph · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

nice exciting true story of a true heroine. Her story should be remembered as she didn’t get what was her due in her lifetime

[sarah220-732610 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating story of survival but over-all it was mostly just a sad story. Well-intentioned and courageous men and a woman trying to explore and survive in the Arctic Circle while others exploited and neglected them. It was very detailed but since the main outcome of the expedition was on the back cover, it felt somewhat slowly paced.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jennifer Niven calls Ada Blackjack a hero. I don't think I would go that far. She didn't save anyone's life and her heroic deeds were limited to having the courage and resourcefulness to survive her unlikely predicament physically unscathed. I say unlikely because what would a impoverished and divorced 23 year old Inuit woman (a rumored prostitute) be doing on a potentially illegal expedition in the wilds of an Arctic island with four young white men and a cat? Desperate to find a husband and to make enough money to care for her oft-ill son, Ada signs on a seamstress with explorer Vilhjamur Stefansson's mission to colonize barren Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia. Using the theory of squatters' rights, Stafansson sent four young men and six months worth of supplies to plant the British flag on what he thought was unclaimed land. He only sent them with six months of supplies because he was sure they could survive off the land once they had exhausted their stores. What could possibly go wrong in the "friendly" Arctic?
It's not a plot spoiler to say that Ada was the only human to make it out alive (and yes, the cat survives, too). But, here's where the story gets interesting. Stefansson vacillates between wanting to take all the credit for Ada's survival and pretending he's never heard of the woman. It's what happens after the rescue that becomes the bigger story.

As an aside, I love the process of discovery. While Niven was researching her first book, The Ice Master she discovered Nome, Alaska native Ada Blackjack. Ada's adventure intrigued Niven enough to prompt her to dig into Blackjack's life story and ultimately, write a memoir about her expedition with four white men (and a cat) to Wrangel Island.

[waltzmn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes two is not better than one.

This book tries to do two things. One is to tell the story of the 1921-1923 Wrangel Island expedition in which the Inuit woman Ada Blackjack participated. The other, and the primarily one, is to tell Ada's own life story.

These two really do need to be reviewed separately. The story of the Wrangel Island expedition is, I think, very good; it explains how it was conceived, how the five people involved came together, and -- insofar as can be known -- how four of them came to die. The one thing that bothers me is that three different narratives arose about the failure of the expedition, which might be called the "Stefansson narrative" (after the organizer of the expedition), the "Noice narrative" (after the man who rescued them but then gratuitously destroyed expedition records in a quest for fame), and Niven's own narrative. Obviously Niven believes her own reconstruction to be correct. I incline to believe it, too, but I was constantly thinking, "Can you prove that?" Maybe Niven can, but I didn't feel as if it had been proved.

That caution being spoken, I repeat that the narrative of the expedition is good.

The narrative of Ada Blackjack was more complicated. Oh, I concede that Niven didn't have much material to work with as far as actual biography is concerned; records about Inuit born in the late 1800s are all but non-existent! And Blackjack didn't leave much in the way of personal accounts, and she seems to have been quite socially isolated. So, in essence, we get a capsule biography of Ada's early years, a detailed examination of a period of four years or so when she was in public view, and then it's back to the capsule biography. It's not really a portrait of a complete person.

But it is a very puzzling story. Why did Ada Blackjack suffer so much at the hands of the other members of the expedition? "Arctic hysteria" is just a phrase. There is no question but that some people do turn very strange in the Arctic; history shows that again and again. But Ada's was a different sort of strangeness. And she was socially isolated among both Inuit and Europeans. She had repeated marital liaisons that failed. She was afraid of all sorts of things, with polar bears being the most noteworthy. When attacked, she rarely defended herself from the charges against her. She doesn't seem to have liked to talk. It sounds as if she had a thing about jigsaw puzzles. The list goes on.

At minimum, it's the picture of a woman who had anxiety issues. But also social phobia. She wasn't stupid -- her ability to survive when four stronger, more assertive men failed shows that. But she had trouble using her skills.

We all see what we want to see. As a person who has autism myself, what I saw was a woman who had autism, and suffered the social cost that people with autism often pay. Do I know that? Of course not. Author Niven never tries to get into Ada's psychology at all, except for the brief mention of Arctic hysteria, which she treats as an isolated thing. But it doesn't matter if Ada had autism or not; what matters is that we don't really understand her enough to be sure. In the end, I'm not sure I gained any real understanding of this woman who was, potentially, so important -- one of the first women to engage in Arctic exploration. This feels like a hole in the book, to me. At least, it nagged at me throughout.

On the other hand, I know of no other modern books about the 1920s expedition. We owe Jennifer Niven a lot for reminding us of it. And of the woman who, in the 1920s, very quietly showed that women were capable of a lot more than the men of the time gave them credit for.

[triplehhh_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the Best Expedition books I ever read!

[nyiper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Incredibly detailed and just plain fascinating. The twists and turns are exactly like a novel---except, of course, that it's a true story, as it says on the cover. The manipulations of those behind the expedition and the eventual rescue of Ada are crushingly disappointing, to put it mildly---greed? Self-promotion for undeserved fame? Sad.

[elizabethchapman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The true story of four young men and Ada Blackjack, a 23-year-old Inuit woman, sent by the explorer Vilhalmur Stefansson to settle Wrangel Island, an inhabited spot of land in the Arctic Circle.

Stefansson believed the Arctic could be colonized with ease and sent others to do it for him. The result, not surprisingly, was tragic disaster. Trying to live off the land, the expeditionary party on Wrangel soon begins to starve. And Ada ends up having to survive alone.

The book focuses on Ada as a person and as a representative of the exploitation and condescension women and the Inuit faced in the first half of the 20th century. Long on adventure and, thankfully, short on polemic.