-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Yi Shun Lai
A teen's fight for suffrage turns into one of survival when her crew's Antarctic expedition ship gets stuck in the ice in this historical novel told in journal entries perfect for fans of Gary Paulsen and The Downstairs Girl.
November 1914.
Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is one of twenty-eight crew members of The Resolute—a ship meant for an Antarctic expedition now marooned on ice one hundred miles from the shore of the continent. An eighteen-year-old American, Clara has told the crew she's a twenty-one-year-old Canadian. Since the war broke out, sentiment toward Americans has not been the most favorable, and Clara will be underestimated enough simply for being a woman without also giving away just how young she is. Two members of the crew know her nationality, but no one knows the truth of her activities in England before The Resolute set sail.
She and her suffragist sisters in the Women's Social & Political Union were waging war of a different kind in London. They taught Clara to fight. And now, even marooned on the ice, she won't stop fighting for women's rights...or for survival. In the wilderness of Antarctica, Clara is determined to demonstrate what a woman is truly capable of—if the crew will let her.
"As a character, Clara feels modern but not anachronistic; she's wrestling with social issues that continue to resonate today, and her strong voice propels readers through an adventure as compelling as Shackleton's own to a heartfelt, realistic conclusion. Polar exploration transforms a young woman in unexpected and interesting ways in this original, evocative tale." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Clara is a defiant and resilient heroine who immediately endears herself to both the reader and her motley crew. As tension mounts and survival becomes uncertain, Lai neatly underscores the courage it took—and still takes—to be a woman in a male-dominated world." —Publishers Weekly
"Lai successfully blends the events of Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with the social climate of the suffragist movement in 1914 and pairs it with a sharp-witted, charismatic narrator who readers can easily root for." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
This information about A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Yi Shun Lai lives in Southern California, and she can talk to you forever about plants and animals and deserts both hot and cold. She volunteers for ShelterBox, an international disaster-relief organization, and was once invited to be a crew member aboard an Antarctic cruise line. She's the author of novels Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu and A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic and memoir Pin Ups. You can read her essays in Shondaland and Brevity. Find her on the web at TheGoodDirt.org.
If you liked A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic, try these:
by Quan Barry
Published 2025
From the award-winning author of We Ride Upon Sticks and When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East, a genre-bending novel of literary horror set in Antarctica that explores abandonment, guilt, and survival in the shadow of America's racial legacy.
by Jon McGregor
Published 2022
A thrilling and propulsive novel of an Antarctica expedition gone wrong and its far-reaching consequences for the explorers and their families "leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story" (Hilary Mantel).
by Maggie Shipstead
Published 2022
An unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost - Great Circle spans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
