Sue Carter

Sue ( L. Susan) Carter is a Professor in the Michigan State University School of Journalism. She has served as the Secretary of the MSU Board of Trustees and Executive Assistant to the university ...

Ordinary Women
An Arctic Adventure

Sue Carter

Click this link to read sample chapters from Ordinary Women

Ordinary Women is the exciting chronicle of the first all- women ski expedition from the Russian side of the planet to the North Pole. Team selection, physical training, and the logistics of managing food, clothing, and shelter in an environment that "...wants you dead," are crisply presented in chilling detail, quite literally. Full of surprises from its inception to its execution nearly eight years later, this is an amazing story of women working together, taking on harsh critics, challenging each other, and reaching a common goal. The group, which expanded and contracted through the stresses that all major expeditions face, was made up of determined but fairly ordinary women, who dedicated their arduous trek to young women. From the pitfalls of fundraising to the perils of breaking ice, this intrepid band of adventurers not only achieved their common goal, but transformed themselves in the process.
 
Sue Carter, the expedition’s organizer, describes the problems with group leadership, both in preparation for the expedition and while on the ice.
 
Nevertheless, the women reached the top of the world, and a waiting NASA crew; for an international webcast to schoolchildren who had followed their expedition; and for a segment on Good Morning America.

FROM ORDINARY WOMEN -
"We had been in Khatanga slightly more than twenty- four hours, but news of this unusual all-women team had captured the imagination of some of the others who were also North Pole bound. Apparently there were side bets taking place as to whether or not this fairly ordinary band of women would survive in the Arctic andmake it to 90 degrees north. Smart money was against us."

Reviews

"...An amazing journey. These are a dozen women and they are not the women you might think who necessarily train their whole lives to be athletes - these are journalists, these are mothers, these are women who set out to a place where you can freeze to death in an instant…and they did it well...Ordinary Women - an extraordinary feat."
- Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America

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"Has anyone ever told you that you couldn't do something because of who you are?....because "girls didn't do that"...Ordinary Woman is an armchair adventurer's dream book, and its lack of technical terms makes it easy to understand for non-skiers...."- South Haven Tribune