Ice and Gold

In times of economic hardship, peoples of any nation will immigrate to better their lot in life. But nothing in history has ever matched the number and scope of those who stepped into the unknown by leaving everything behind in the hopes of ‘striking it rich’ once gold was discovered in the Klondike region of the Yukon Territory in western Canada.

Drawn into the Yukon Territory, they came by the tens of thousands. Called by the adventure of it, the greed that might be quenched, or the unseen malady of ‘Gold fever.’ They would be tested by 500 miles of untamed wilderness, raging rivers, subarctic temperatures, and the worst natures of man.

They have weathered high, snow-covered passes, ice chocked rivers, personal loss, and the worst of mankind’s deceptions to venture nearly five-hundred miles overland from the Pacific’s salt water to the Yukon frontier and the Klondike boom town of Dawson City. During this summer season of 1898, our favorite characters are part of the 30,000 souls that crushed in on the city, all with the intent on getting rich, either by digging in the mud for the ‘Flecks of Kings,’ or by mining the miners at a poker table, the supply store, and even in the bedroom.

The gold drew them into the wilderness, only to test them with the most trying and thrilling experiences of their lives. It held them in the boom town of Dawson with a fever that would not break as long as nuggets, flakes, and dust could still be dredged from the muddy creeks, as long as there was even a chance at getting rich off the yellow metal as it spilled to the scales for services rendered, or found its way secreted into one’s pockets for the same.

This is Book V in the Ice and Gold Series. The Finale. They have prevailed over the hardships that threatened to take their very lives as they trekked hundreds of miles through untamed wilderness to reach this place over trepidation and fear, heightened by an unknown future and the gold fever that drives them. They have also endured each other, as they weather: debauchery, excesses, lawlessness, greed, trickery, and piousness to find their place in this, the greatest city on the mighty Yukon River of the far north.