A Line of Driftwood: The Ada Blackjack Story

by Diane Glancy

Overview

A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE, 2021

Diane Glancy once again puts Indigenous women at the center of American history in her account of a young Inupiat woman who survived a treacherous arctic expedition alone. 

"This moving retelling of a heroic woman’s journey demonstrates that history lives through an intimate connection between two women beyond time’s borders."—Booklist, starred review

In September 1921, a young Inupiat woman named Ada Blackjack traveled to Wrangel Island, 200 miles off the Arctic Coast of Siberia, as a cook and seamstress, along with four professional explorers. The expedition did not go as planned. When a rescue ship finally broke through the ice two years later, she was the only survivor. 

Diane Glancy discovered Blackjack’s diary in the Dartmouth archives and created a new narrative based on the historical record and her vision of this woman’s extraordinary life. She tells the story of a woman facing danger, loss, and unimaginable hardship, yet surviving against the odds where four “experts” could not. Beyond the expedition, the story examines Blackjack’s childhood experiences at an Indian residential school, her struggles as a mother and wife, and the faith that enabled her to survive alone on a remote island in the Arctic Sea.

Glancy’s creative telling of this heroic tale is a high mark in her award-winning hybrid investigations of suffering, identity, and Native American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933527215
Publisher:	Turtle Point Press
Publication date:	09/28/2021
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	651,605
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Diane Glancy is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and professor emeritus at Macalester College. Her works have won the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, a Juniper Prize for Poetry, and an American Book Award. In 2018, Publishers Weekly named her book Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears one of the ten essential Native American novels. Her 2020 work, Island of the Innocent: A Consideration of the Book of Job continues and deepens a lifelong exploration of the religious and cultural dimensions of identity.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpts from A Line of Driftwood: The Ada Blackjack Story

I wanted to know Ada’s thoughts on being literate. On learning penmanship. The meaning of it. Making marks for letters. The discovery that literacy was more than writing. More than meat and potatoes, though there were no potatoes there. They were rotten on arrival at Wrangle Island. I realized Ada’s developing consciousness of self and identity of difference from others. It is between the sentences she wrote. There was an individualization of Ada Blackjack that she did not yet put into words. But there it is in the crevices. It is in her diary. It is in the calendar-book on which she marked off her days.

#

I am not alone.

I have writing.

I have the Polar Lights.

They move across the sky as though they were writing.

#

The men were going to claim Wrangel Island.

But the land claimed them.

That was their discovery.

#

The driftwood tells stories of where it came from.

It has been with other trees.

Now it is on an island by itself.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Scar 10

Part 1 The Voice of Her Journey

Ada Blackjack 12

Part 2 Ada's Writings and Diary

Fall 1921 68

1923 82

Part 3 Epilogue

Trip to Rauner Collections at Dartmouth 110

Trip to Alaska 112

Appendix

Ventriloquate 116

A Story within a Story 119

Postscript 123

Acknowledgments 125

Editorial Reviews

Praise for A Line of Driftwood

“This is not a reconstruction; it is symbiosis as an act of respect and dignity. As Diane Glancy 'ventriloquizes' Ada into a truth of words—written, typed, spoken, thought—she speaks the paradoxical truth of acts of writing as self-witness: 'I am hurting when I am writing.’ Isolation becomes revelation. The spiritual driftwood becomes a testament of sacred connection and a claiming back of voice.” —John Kinsella

“The shifting of ice. Written letters become elk, an orange is a moon, an owl is a blank page, and the stunning survival in this Arctic landscape redefines the question, “What is rescue?” Diane Glancy hears the spirits, the words beneath the words. She knows the language of scars as she honors the life of Ada Blackjack in this visionary telling of the moving world.”
—Jan Beatty

“Building on diaries from a century ago, Diane Glancy weaves poetry and prose to tell the gripping story of an ill-fated expedition to a remote Arctic island. She brings bits of dry historical records to life by interspersing poetry in the voice of a troubled indigenous woman who displayed great resilience founded on her Christian faith. A Line of Driftwood is unforgettable.” —A.M. Juster

Praise for Diane Glancy

“Glancy is a treasure.” —American Book Review

"A moving testament to the creative act of enduring."—Foreword Reviews, starred review

"What bounty to have Glancy's great art erupt once more." —Spencer Reece

"Is there a tether that pulls [Diane Glancy] back into the historical? Or is it the other way around?" —Peter Mishler, LitHub

"Stunning. ...A graphic and compelling mosaic of human tragedy." —Library Journal, starred review

"[An] illuminating and challenging chronicle of loss, despair, and regeneration." —Washington Post Book World

From the Publisher