Ada BlackJack

September 22, 2003
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. Agent, John Ware. (Nov. 12)Forecast: Niven's previous book was named one of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the Year 2000 and was featured in documentaries on Dateline NBC and the Discovery Channel. A radio interview campaign and national print ads should help her second book receive widespread attention.

November 1, 2003
Was there ever a polar expedition that went smoothly, accomplished its goals, and brought back every team member alive? Are there any books written about them? Maybe so, but you'd hardly know it; we are all enthralled with the drama of disastrous adventures that inevitably fall apart when confronting Nature's elements. Niven follows up her first book in this vein, The Ice Master, with a sequel of sorts in which the same incompetent leader of a tragic Arctic mission organizes a second expedition to the same area in 1921. The book's focus, although it occasionally slips, is on a 23-year-old Inuit woman named Ada Blackjack, who was hired as the team's seamstress and was destined to be the only survivor of the misbegotten venture. Niven builds a solid and suspenseful tale around the framework of records and diaries to reveal an obscure woman's accidental heroism. However, the work as a whole is equally descriptive of the other three members of the team and the aftermath for all the families involved. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.-Elizabeth Morris, formerly with Otsego Dist. P.L., MI

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2003
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)