Niven, Jennifer

"In 1945, Velva Jean Hart is a bona fide war heroine. After a newsreel films her triumphant return to America, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promises to make her a star. They give her a new life story and a brand new name. As 'Kit Rogers,' she navigates the movie sets, recording sessions, parties, staged romances, and occasional backstabbing that accompany her newfound fame. She also navigates real-life romance, finding herself caught between a charismatic young writer and a sexy and enigmatic musician from her past"--.

Velva Jean leaves Appalachia to pursue her dream of being a singer, but instead discovers she wants to be a female pilot after her brother treats her to a surprise flying lesson.

"Told in alternating voices, when Theodore Finch and Violet Markey meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school--both teetering on the edge--it's the beginning of an unlikely relationship, a journey to discover the "natural wonders" of the state of Indiana, and two teens' desperate desire to heal and save one another".

In 1921, four men and one woman ventured deep into the Arctic in a top-secret expedition to Wrangel Island. Only one would survive---Ada Blackjack, an Alaskian Inuit. She had been hired to sew and cook for the expedition and was happy to get the work as she had to support her young son. But soon the expedition went horribly wrong and all four men eventually went missing or died. Ada was left alone on the island to fend for herself. Two years later she was miraculously rescued and hailed as a heroine for her survival under impossible conditions.

Examines the life and work of Ada Blackjack, an Inuit woman who traveled with four explorers to the Arctic but became stranded with one of them when winter set in.

Discusses the 1913-14 Arctic scientific expedition on the H.M.C.S "Karluk" that ended when its twenty-two men, an Inuit woman and her two very young daughters, twenty-nine dogs, and a pet cat were shipwrecked in the Arctic Ocean, and describes their attempts to survive until twelve of them were rescued nine months later.