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Gold Diggers: Striking it Rich in the Klondike
“Gray memorably resuscitates the life of the miners . . . A lively, delightful reenactment of a single era of ‘Klondike mythology.’” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of over thirty thousand people. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history. Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and stories, Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling tale of the gold madness that swept through a continent and changed a landscape and its people forever. In Gold Diggers, she follows six stampeders―Bill Haskell, a farm boy who hungered for striking gold; Father Judge, a Jesuit priest who aimed to save souls and lives; Belinda Mulrooney, a twenty-four-year-old who became the richest businesswoman in town; Flora Shaw, a journalist who transformed the towns governance; Sam Steele, the officer who finally established order in the lawless town; and most famously Jack London, who left without gold, but with the stories that would make him a legend. “Gray has hit pay dirt with this hardscrabble history, a vibrant, detailed recreation of the frenzied boomtown of Dawson City.” ―Publishers Weekly “A fascinating, rich account . . . Readers can only be grateful to such a skilled writer and historian as Charlotte Gray to let us go to, feel, smell and wonder at such an astonishing place as Dawson City during the ephemeral gold rush.” ― The Globe and Mail The inspiration for the TV miniseries, Klondike.
413 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Charlotte Gray
62 books130 followersCharlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of eight acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history.
Charlotte's most recent book is Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. In 2008, Charlotte published Nellie McClung, a short biography of Canada’s leading women’s rights activist in the Penguin Series, Extraordinary Canadians. Her 2006 bestseller, Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, won the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History and the City of Ottawa Book Award. It was also nominated for the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the National Business Book Award and the Trillium Award. Her previous five books, which include Sisters in the Wilderness, The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, Flint & Feather, The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson and A Museum Called Canada, were all award-winning bestsellers.
Charlotte appears regularly on radio and television as a political and cultural commentator. In 2004 she was the advocate for Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, for the CBC series: The Greatest Canadian. She has been a judge for several of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes, including the Giller Prize for Fiction, the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-fiction and the Shaunessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
Charlotte has been awarded five honorary doctorates, from Mount St. Vincent University, Nova Scotia, the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, York University and Carleton University.
An Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, Charlotte is the 2003 Recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history. She is former chair of the board of Canada’s National History Society, which publishes the magazine Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver.) She sits on the boards of the Ottawa International Authors Festival, the Art Canada Institute/Institut de l’Art Canadien, and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. Charlotte is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Charlotte lives in Ottawa with her husband George Anderson, and has three sons.
Charlotte's most recent book is Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. In 2008, Charlotte published Nellie McClung, a short biography of Canada’s leading women’s rights activist in the Penguin Series, Extraordinary Canadians. Her 2006 bestseller, Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, won the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History and the City of Ottawa Book Award. It was also nominated for the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the National Business Book Award and the Trillium Award. Her previous five books, which include Sisters in the Wilderness, The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, Flint & Feather, The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson and A Museum Called Canada, were all award-winning bestsellers.
Charlotte appears regularly on radio and television as a political and cultural commentator. In 2004 she was the advocate for Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, for the CBC series: The Greatest Canadian. She has been a judge for several of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes, including the Giller Prize for Fiction, the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-fiction and the Shaunessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
Charlotte has been awarded five honorary doctorates, from Mount St. Vincent University, Nova Scotia, the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, York University and Carleton University.
An Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, Charlotte is the 2003 Recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history. She is former chair of the board of Canada’s National History Society, which publishes the magazine Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver.) She sits on the boards of the Ottawa International Authors Festival, the Art Canada Institute/Institut de l’Art Canadien, and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. Charlotte is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Charlotte lives in Ottawa with her husband George Anderson, and has three sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
July 1, 2018
Recently, I was telling a family member who had worked and lived in Dawson City for many years about a book that I enjoyed reading called “The Yukon Grieves for No One” by Lynn Berk. Being an avid fan of the Yukon Lore, he proceeded to tell me about “Gold Diggers – Striking It Rich In The Yukon” by Charlotte Gray. So...I went out and got a copy
No event in our history is more legendary than the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896. With the discovery of rich gold deposits in Bonanza Creek, 100,000 prospectors headed for the Yukon within a few months. People from all walks of life — Canadians, Americans, British, even Australians — landed in the newly created Dawson City in search of instant wealth. Hungry miners hoped for the one big strike; others, for prosperity in this instant boom town; some, for the adventure of a lifetime.
This is the story of the Gold Rush through the intimate lives of six extraordinary people: the saintly priest Father Judge; the feisty entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney; the struggling writer Jack London; the imperious British journalist Flora Shaw; the legendary Sam Steele of the Mounties; and the prospector William Haskell.
Brilliantly interweaving their stories, Gray creates a fascinating panorama of a frontier town where desperados, saloon keepers, gamblers, dance hall girls, churchmen and law-makers were thrown together in a volatile time.
Beautifully illustrated with period photographs and documents of the Gold Rush, Gold Diggers is a colourful and entertaining journey into a world gone mad for wealth. Pierre Burton wrote that the Klondike experience was about “man search for himself as much as for gold
In reading this book, you come to admire the brave souls who risked everything to go to the Yukon in search of this precious metal. Like soldiers returning from war or mountaineers who have scaled Everest, they probably came to realize that they were part of something bigger than themselves. They accepted all the risks to get rich quick and pitted themselves against all the harsh cruel elements and somehow managed to survive. They packed a lifetime of experiences in the briefest of spans and see sights that they will never see again – who out there claim that?
I got a kick out of the author’s postscript about the spell of the Yukon and when a burlesque dancer told her that the men still outnumbered the women and that “the odds are good but the goods are odd” - The odds are good that you will enjoy reading about the adventures of these colourful characters in the land of the midnight sun.
No event in our history is more legendary than the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896. With the discovery of rich gold deposits in Bonanza Creek, 100,000 prospectors headed for the Yukon within a few months. People from all walks of life — Canadians, Americans, British, even Australians — landed in the newly created Dawson City in search of instant wealth. Hungry miners hoped for the one big strike; others, for prosperity in this instant boom town; some, for the adventure of a lifetime.
This is the story of the Gold Rush through the intimate lives of six extraordinary people: the saintly priest Father Judge; the feisty entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney; the struggling writer Jack London; the imperious British journalist Flora Shaw; the legendary Sam Steele of the Mounties; and the prospector William Haskell.
Brilliantly interweaving their stories, Gray creates a fascinating panorama of a frontier town where desperados, saloon keepers, gamblers, dance hall girls, churchmen and law-makers were thrown together in a volatile time.
Beautifully illustrated with period photographs and documents of the Gold Rush, Gold Diggers is a colourful and entertaining journey into a world gone mad for wealth. Pierre Burton wrote that the Klondike experience was about “man search for himself as much as for gold
In reading this book, you come to admire the brave souls who risked everything to go to the Yukon in search of this precious metal. Like soldiers returning from war or mountaineers who have scaled Everest, they probably came to realize that they were part of something bigger than themselves. They accepted all the risks to get rich quick and pitted themselves against all the harsh cruel elements and somehow managed to survive. They packed a lifetime of experiences in the briefest of spans and see sights that they will never see again – who out there claim that?
I got a kick out of the author’s postscript about the spell of the Yukon and when a burlesque dancer told her that the men still outnumbered the women and that “the odds are good but the goods are odd” - The odds are good that you will enjoy reading about the adventures of these colourful characters in the land of the midnight sun.
June 12, 2012
The back cover blurb reads: "Mounties, miners, ministers, and dance hall girls — they all came to Dawson City in the Yukon as the world went mad for gold."
Respected biographer Charlotte Gray has chosen six different individuals to profile in this book from among thousands who flocked to the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s. There's the miner William Haskell, whose partner Joe Meeker is tragically swept away under the ice by the swift current in the Yukon River; the selfless Jesuit priest, Father Judge; British journalist Flora Shaw; shrewd businesswoman and entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney;legendary law man, Mountie Sam Steele; and my favourite, a young American writer by the name of Jack London.
Each one of the interwoven stories is fascinating as the subjects struggle to make new lives for themselves in the far north, at times barely surviving the harsh environment.
This is a well-researched volume, and I found it highly readable and vastly interesting.
Respected biographer Charlotte Gray has chosen six different individuals to profile in this book from among thousands who flocked to the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s. There's the miner William Haskell, whose partner Joe Meeker is tragically swept away under the ice by the swift current in the Yukon River; the selfless Jesuit priest, Father Judge; British journalist Flora Shaw; shrewd businesswoman and entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney;legendary law man, Mountie Sam Steele; and my favourite, a young American writer by the name of Jack London.
Each one of the interwoven stories is fascinating as the subjects struggle to make new lives for themselves in the far north, at times barely surviving the harsh environment.
This is a well-researched volume, and I found it highly readable and vastly interesting.
November 26, 2019
Having read a lot about Dawson and the Klondike, this book did not really add anything for me. In fact, I think Pierre Berton did a better job of organizing the chaos into a readable narrative in his famous volume. Gray was in Dawson just a few months after I was there. I do have a quibble with the copy-editing, which seems to have slacked off by the end of this volume (the peak population of Dawson is given as 300,000 rather than 30,000; the amount of gold shipped out at the end of a particular year is said to have been 1.5 million TONS with a value of $9 million! There is even a typo in the Dawson City librarian's name). This book is perhaps best suited for those who are only just discovering the Klondike gold rush.
July 15, 2017
I love Charlotte Gray's writing style and for that reason she gets four stars.
The book, for me, really only deserved a 3.5 rating but so be it. This book illustrated five people who were willing to accept the challenges of digging Gold in the Yukon Gold Rush. They were challenging times to say the lest -- from moving through, over, the Chilkoot Pass to adapting to the weather conditions which were so different from many were use to. Gray choice William Haskell, Belinda Mulrooney, Jack London, Flora Shaw, Sam Steele and Father Judge. These individuals all had their quirks and place in the history of Dawson Creek. If nothing else, they were influential powerful individuals during the early years.
I gravitated toward Belinda Mulrooney and could easily see how she was taken in by her husband. As my family always said, you should date someone like the Count, even have an affair with him, but one should never ever marry someone like the Count. Belinda was fascinating in her own right and I will seek out her biography to read more about her.
I loved Bill Haskell and Father Judge, they were stand up decent people. I could easily see how Sam Steele's arrival in Dawson City got people into a more structured, lawful society. I didn't care for Flora Shaw, but really she was only doing what she was told to do. As for Jack London, I got a whole new perception of him. I also learned more about scurvy which Gray illustrated beautifully in her writing.
This book would be a great source if one was researching areas of the Klondike and didn't want to read the whole book. It was certainly repetitive and could have used a good editor. Especially an editor who READ the information prior to printing instead of just accepting spellcheck. This was a real turn off as far as I am concerned as there were sentence structure issues.
The book, for me, really only deserved a 3.5 rating but so be it. This book illustrated five people who were willing to accept the challenges of digging Gold in the Yukon Gold Rush. They were challenging times to say the lest -- from moving through, over, the Chilkoot Pass to adapting to the weather conditions which were so different from many were use to. Gray choice William Haskell, Belinda Mulrooney, Jack London, Flora Shaw, Sam Steele and Father Judge. These individuals all had their quirks and place in the history of Dawson Creek. If nothing else, they were influential powerful individuals during the early years.
I gravitated toward Belinda Mulrooney and could easily see how she was taken in by her husband. As my family always said, you should date someone like the Count, even have an affair with him, but one should never ever marry someone like the Count. Belinda was fascinating in her own right and I will seek out her biography to read more about her.
I loved Bill Haskell and Father Judge, they were stand up decent people. I could easily see how Sam Steele's arrival in Dawson City got people into a more structured, lawful society. I didn't care for Flora Shaw, but really she was only doing what she was told to do. As for Jack London, I got a whole new perception of him. I also learned more about scurvy which Gray illustrated beautifully in her writing.
This book would be a great source if one was researching areas of the Klondike and didn't want to read the whole book. It was certainly repetitive and could have used a good editor. Especially an editor who READ the information prior to printing instead of just accepting spellcheck. This was a real turn off as far as I am concerned as there were sentence structure issues.
June 17, 2012
Well told historical tales. The only thing that would have been better is if they were fictionalized to be even closer to the reader. That's just my preference. Gray did a solid job of weaving six different character's lives together, and to bringing the significance and feel of the arctic at the turn of the century into our modern day imagination by able comparison.
February 7, 2012
This awesome book is not about this kind of gold digging (Nathaniel wondered?) Though, Jamie Foxx and Kanye West in the Klondike in 1896 probably would have been awesome. At the very least, the gambling halls, bars and hookers would have been even more rich from their patronage!
So...not about:
but totally about:
In seriousness, though, Gray did a great job with the book. Gold Diggers covers the gold rush period from 1896 till 1899, viewed through the narratives of prospector William Haskell, business woman Belinda Mulrooney, Jesuit missionary Father William Judge, author Jack London, journalist Flora Shaw of the London Times, and Superintendent Sam Steele of the North West Mounted Police. Reflecting the demographics of the gold rush, four of the characters are American; one is British, and one Canadian.
From the Globe and Mail:
There are, of course, scores of books about particular aspects of the Klondike Gold Rush, but perhaps only three authors can be said to have written thoughtful and truly enlightening narratives of the whole gaudy affair.
Tappan Adney, the famed canoeist, joined the rush on behalf of Harper’s Weekly, out-reporting all the more famous journalists and producing The Klondike Stampede in 1900, when the ashes of the event were still warm.
Fifty-one years later came The Big Pan-Out, which added an understanding of economics to the story. Strangely, it has never been reprinted, and its author, Kathryn Winslow, seemed to have published almost nothing else (but is remembered as the patron of American novelist Henry Miller).
And of course there is Pierre Berton’s Klondike (1958). Charlotte Gray, who has steadily become Canada’s most important and certainly most careful and most readable producer of popular narrative history, notes that her famed predecessor “reverberated with [...] exuberance and sweaty machismo.”
She, herself, does not, thank [Darwin] (or God or FSM or whomever you would like to thank, here).
In Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike, Gray sets out to revivify “the experience of a few characters in this large historical drama [and] to jigsaw together real stories to illuminate, over a century later, life in Dawson City” when it was booming with a deafening report. All but one of the handful of individuals she has chosen are already quite familiar, but they will never appear quite the same again once the readers have seen how she has made use of them.
Rev. William Judge, S.J., the so-called Saint of Dawson, was “a strange character – ascetic, deeply religious, guileless, but not naive. Those who met him recognized the quality of the man.” He had no interest whatever in gold and, being in his late 40s, “was twice the age of most men there,” such as Jack London, 21. London spent a year in the Yukon soaking up material for future short stories but left with a mere in $4.50 in gold and only one tooth in his young head, having lost the others to scurvy. Then there is the heroic yet vaguely Gilbert-and-Sullivan-ish character of Samuel Steele of the North-West Mounted Police, a well-meaning martinet not completely untouched by the rampant corruption that Gray unravels so well.
Gray is one of those [great] authors who writes with equally sympathetic understanding of both men and women, free of judgmental assumptions or home-team boosterism. As a result, Steele comes across as the other half of his fellow imperialist tub-thumper Flora Shaw, special correspondent of The Times of London. A female colleague described Shaw as being “as clever as they make them, capable of any immense amount of work, as hard as nails and talking like a Times leader all the time.” When supping with a group of Mounties and three Tlingit prisoners soon to be hanged, Shaw “behaved as graciously as if she was joining her friend the Duchess of Devonshire for dinner.” (Gray goes on to mention that Shaw was active in the anti-women’s-suffrage movement, a fact that could use some elaboration.)
The two Dawsonites who seem closest to Gray’s heart are Belinda Mulrooney and Bill Haskell. The former lived until 1967, nine years longer than even Robert W. Service, the last and least of Gray’s picks. She was a working-class Irishwoman who “could handle any amount of deprivation as long as she was making money.” And she made a huge pile of it, as a hotelier and deal-maker, only to fall prey to a professional con man posing as a French count. As for Haskell, he was one of the Yukon veterans who, on hearing of the big strike on the Klondike River, lit out from the community of Fortymile, the proto-Dawson some distance downstream, near the Alaska border. He was a working stiff and one of what Gray calls the “obsessive, reckless individuals” drawn to such commotions. Soon after leaving Dawson, heartbroken by the death of his mining buddy and business partner, he published a vivid but now obscure memoir and then disappeared completely from the historical record.
A deep researcher and skilled explainer, Gray is also shrewd, calm and confident in the way she creates her book’s complex architecture. She is likewise an engaging stylist. Describing one of the catastrophic fires to which Dawson, a place made of canvas and green lumber, was prone, she writes: “People rushed out of the dance halls and bars as the roar of the flames competed with the fiddles and laughter.”
And she keeps her subtext subtle. Like Berton, she compares charmingly chaotic Dawson, held in check by cops and soldiers, with wide-open Skagway on the U.S. side, ruled by crooks and murderers. But she allows readers to discover for themselves the important underlying paradox. It is this: Exotic colonies, though authoritarian by nature, are also often the freest of places, as they’re so remote from the seats of centralized power. Hannah Arendt, the great political philosopher, once suggested that the best form of government is the temporary kind that pops up organically immediately after the revolution and dies as soon as a new constitution gets written. For one noisy moment in 1898, Dawson must have been such a spot.
So...not about:
but totally about:
In seriousness, though, Gray did a great job with the book. Gold Diggers covers the gold rush period from 1896 till 1899, viewed through the narratives of prospector William Haskell, business woman Belinda Mulrooney, Jesuit missionary Father William Judge, author Jack London, journalist Flora Shaw of the London Times, and Superintendent Sam Steele of the North West Mounted Police. Reflecting the demographics of the gold rush, four of the characters are American; one is British, and one Canadian.
From the Globe and Mail:
There are, of course, scores of books about particular aspects of the Klondike Gold Rush, but perhaps only three authors can be said to have written thoughtful and truly enlightening narratives of the whole gaudy affair.
Tappan Adney, the famed canoeist, joined the rush on behalf of Harper’s Weekly, out-reporting all the more famous journalists and producing The Klondike Stampede in 1900, when the ashes of the event were still warm.
Fifty-one years later came The Big Pan-Out, which added an understanding of economics to the story. Strangely, it has never been reprinted, and its author, Kathryn Winslow, seemed to have published almost nothing else (but is remembered as the patron of American novelist Henry Miller).
And of course there is Pierre Berton’s Klondike (1958). Charlotte Gray, who has steadily become Canada’s most important and certainly most careful and most readable producer of popular narrative history, notes that her famed predecessor “reverberated with [...] exuberance and sweaty machismo.”
She, herself, does not, thank [Darwin] (or God or FSM or whomever you would like to thank, here).
In Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike, Gray sets out to revivify “the experience of a few characters in this large historical drama [and] to jigsaw together real stories to illuminate, over a century later, life in Dawson City” when it was booming with a deafening report. All but one of the handful of individuals she has chosen are already quite familiar, but they will never appear quite the same again once the readers have seen how she has made use of them.
Rev. William Judge, S.J., the so-called Saint of Dawson, was “a strange character – ascetic, deeply religious, guileless, but not naive. Those who met him recognized the quality of the man.” He had no interest whatever in gold and, being in his late 40s, “was twice the age of most men there,” such as Jack London, 21. London spent a year in the Yukon soaking up material for future short stories but left with a mere in $4.50 in gold and only one tooth in his young head, having lost the others to scurvy. Then there is the heroic yet vaguely Gilbert-and-Sullivan-ish character of Samuel Steele of the North-West Mounted Police, a well-meaning martinet not completely untouched by the rampant corruption that Gray unravels so well.
Gray is one of those [great] authors who writes with equally sympathetic understanding of both men and women, free of judgmental assumptions or home-team boosterism. As a result, Steele comes across as the other half of his fellow imperialist tub-thumper Flora Shaw, special correspondent of The Times of London. A female colleague described Shaw as being “as clever as they make them, capable of any immense amount of work, as hard as nails and talking like a Times leader all the time.” When supping with a group of Mounties and three Tlingit prisoners soon to be hanged, Shaw “behaved as graciously as if she was joining her friend the Duchess of Devonshire for dinner.” (Gray goes on to mention that Shaw was active in the anti-women’s-suffrage movement, a fact that could use some elaboration.)
The two Dawsonites who seem closest to Gray’s heart are Belinda Mulrooney and Bill Haskell. The former lived until 1967, nine years longer than even Robert W. Service, the last and least of Gray’s picks. She was a working-class Irishwoman who “could handle any amount of deprivation as long as she was making money.” And she made a huge pile of it, as a hotelier and deal-maker, only to fall prey to a professional con man posing as a French count. As for Haskell, he was one of the Yukon veterans who, on hearing of the big strike on the Klondike River, lit out from the community of Fortymile, the proto-Dawson some distance downstream, near the Alaska border. He was a working stiff and one of what Gray calls the “obsessive, reckless individuals” drawn to such commotions. Soon after leaving Dawson, heartbroken by the death of his mining buddy and business partner, he published a vivid but now obscure memoir and then disappeared completely from the historical record.
A deep researcher and skilled explainer, Gray is also shrewd, calm and confident in the way she creates her book’s complex architecture. She is likewise an engaging stylist. Describing one of the catastrophic fires to which Dawson, a place made of canvas and green lumber, was prone, she writes: “People rushed out of the dance halls and bars as the roar of the flames competed with the fiddles and laughter.”
And she keeps her subtext subtle. Like Berton, she compares charmingly chaotic Dawson, held in check by cops and soldiers, with wide-open Skagway on the U.S. side, ruled by crooks and murderers. But she allows readers to discover for themselves the important underlying paradox. It is this: Exotic colonies, though authoritarian by nature, are also often the freest of places, as they’re so remote from the seats of centralized power. Hannah Arendt, the great political philosopher, once suggested that the best form of government is the temporary kind that pops up organically immediately after the revolution and dies as soon as a new constitution gets written. For one noisy moment in 1898, Dawson must have been such a spot.
Lesen
June 2, 2020I decided not to rate this because I was, admittedly, distracted by the protests and riots happening in Minneapolis as I tried to read this. And reading this was meant to be a distraction from all the emotional and physical fatigue of my neighborhood burning down.
Anyrate, that has nothing to do with the book.
This is an interesting book covering a very specific slice of north american history. Gray produces colorful characters from many walks of life who all converged at the Klondike to find gold or collect the gold from those finding it through ridiculous price gouging for food, housing, prostitution, and entertainment.
We meet a young Jack London who would, in many ways, define the far north for most of the English speaking world. An interesting, near deathly, chapter of his life that would define his literary career. So though he failed at prospecting, he turned his experiences in the north into millions. We meet Father Judge, who seems to have been the most respected and beloved man in the Yukon. Then there's Belinda Mulrooney who would shape economic, social, and political life in the town she helped build out of the scrapping Sourdoughs. There are a few other highlighted, but these have the most interesting stories.
But, yeah, it's a very specific bit of history. Covers just a few years as Dawson went from having almost no population to nearly 100,000 and then back down to just a few thousand. It's a story of crime, violence (especially against the indigenous people of the region), greed, lust, loneliness, desperation, and flash-in-the-pan wealth.
In short, it's a fascinating and relatively unknown bit of history.
Anyrate, that has nothing to do with the book.
This is an interesting book covering a very specific slice of north american history. Gray produces colorful characters from many walks of life who all converged at the Klondike to find gold or collect the gold from those finding it through ridiculous price gouging for food, housing, prostitution, and entertainment.
We meet a young Jack London who would, in many ways, define the far north for most of the English speaking world. An interesting, near deathly, chapter of his life that would define his literary career. So though he failed at prospecting, he turned his experiences in the north into millions. We meet Father Judge, who seems to have been the most respected and beloved man in the Yukon. Then there's Belinda Mulrooney who would shape economic, social, and political life in the town she helped build out of the scrapping Sourdoughs. There are a few other highlighted, but these have the most interesting stories.
But, yeah, it's a very specific bit of history. Covers just a few years as Dawson went from having almost no population to nearly 100,000 and then back down to just a few thousand. It's a story of crime, violence (especially against the indigenous people of the region), greed, lust, loneliness, desperation, and flash-in-the-pan wealth.
In short, it's a fascinating and relatively unknown bit of history.
November 9, 2022
When an author does as much research in the writing of a book, I will generally be favourably inclined, as long as the story line and the writing measure up. Gray has done a fabulous job in the writing of this.
Since this was an item of Canadian history, it was not covered in my school history classes, that's for sure. Such a shame we don't learn this part of history in Canadian schools, at least when I was growing up. And I have to admit, I have not read any of the other books out there on the Klondike, so I can't compare.
The Klondike gold rush is the stuff of legend and it has it all - the swashbuckling adventurers, the misfits, the squalor, the misery, the "fever" of those seeking their fortunes, the entrepreneurs, the scoundrels, all wrapped up in a harsh, unforgiving environment.
Because of the vast amount of research, the book is actually quite dense, and I got through the second half faster than the first simply because I read it faster. But that's OK - I learned a lot as Gray brought the characters to life.
I enjoyed it.
Since this was an item of Canadian history, it was not covered in my school history classes, that's for sure. Such a shame we don't learn this part of history in Canadian schools, at least when I was growing up. And I have to admit, I have not read any of the other books out there on the Klondike, so I can't compare.
The Klondike gold rush is the stuff of legend and it has it all - the swashbuckling adventurers, the misfits, the squalor, the misery, the "fever" of those seeking their fortunes, the entrepreneurs, the scoundrels, all wrapped up in a harsh, unforgiving environment.
Because of the vast amount of research, the book is actually quite dense, and I got through the second half faster than the first simply because I read it faster. But that's OK - I learned a lot as Gray brought the characters to life.
I enjoyed it.
January 15, 2024
I have had this book on "to read" shelve for years ... I finally got to it last year, as I was reading The Call of the Wild with my EN 12 class, and wanted to know more about a slice of North American history that I don't know much about, the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th century.
Charlotte Gray is a Canadian writer/historian, and the book focuses on Dawson City and the gold strikes in the Yukon, so the perspective is Canadian, not American, which was an interesting perspective to me. Gray very wisely tells a panoramic story through the stories of a small number of eclectic, memorable characters, including Jack London. This gives the story a much more literary flavor than a straight historical overview.
The book is well-written, and expertly researched - at almost 400 pages, the story really only encompasses two years of history. A recommendation to learn about a part of the world that is so far removed from the lower 48, yet is still part of America and Canada.
Charlotte Gray is a Canadian writer/historian, and the book focuses on Dawson City and the gold strikes in the Yukon, so the perspective is Canadian, not American, which was an interesting perspective to me. Gray very wisely tells a panoramic story through the stories of a small number of eclectic, memorable characters, including Jack London. This gives the story a much more literary flavor than a straight historical overview.
The book is well-written, and expertly researched - at almost 400 pages, the story really only encompasses two years of history. A recommendation to learn about a part of the world that is so far removed from the lower 48, yet is still part of America and Canada.
September 5, 2022
I finally finished this book. That is not to say it is a terrible read! Far from it. It was informative and pieced together so very well. I am in awe at how an author gathers research, facts and pieces them all in one great big picture. And a colourful picture at that! I needed to take my time with this book. Each chapter was a picture of history that I wanted to appreciate. There is an amazing bibliography at the end for further reading which I always appreciate. I enjoyed this glimpse into Canada's past. It is full of amazing women and men. If you don't like reading about history - maybe give this one a try. It is presented like a story that unfolds. I wish all my high school history books read like this.
Lesen
March 28, 2021As word spread across Amaerica, tens of thousands all dropped whatever they were doing and made haste for the north, all following the spirit of '49.
They would have done better to follow its lessons.
By one estimate, twenty percent of all those who'd descended on California back in 1849 had died, so unfit were they to be mining gold.
Now, in 1897, the world was facing a repeat. Of the 100,000 people who would eventually travel to Klondike, almost none had any experience of mining, of surviving in the wild, or of Canadian winter.
The people who made the most reliable money sold shovels and rented donkeys; not the ones digging for gold.
They would have done better to follow its lessons.
By one estimate, twenty percent of all those who'd descended on California back in 1849 had died, so unfit were they to be mining gold.
Now, in 1897, the world was facing a repeat. Of the 100,000 people who would eventually travel to Klondike, almost none had any experience of mining, of surviving in the wild, or of Canadian winter.
The people who made the most reliable money sold shovels and rented donkeys; not the ones digging for gold.
February 27, 2018
I very much enjoyed this interesting read about the Yukon gold rush. In it, the author weaves the stories of 6 people who sought their fortunes in very different ways in the Klondike during that time. I particularly enjoyed reading about Jack London as his novella "Call of the Wild" was a favourite childhood read. I also liked learning about Belinda Mulrooney and Flora Shaw, pioneering women who were instrumental in the development of Dawson City. All in all, Gray's book is an informative read about an integral part of Canada's history.
August 16, 2022
If you are looking for an interesting book about the Klondike Gold Rush, this is the book for you. Charlotte Gray wisely sticks mainly to the stories of six people who were instrumental in the gold rush, and most of them weren't miners. To my mind this was an excellent strategy for her to use as it gave the book structure, and yet kept the reader's attention throughout as the people she chose were so interesting. Charlotte Gray has received many honours for history writing, and with this book she shows why she merits receiving those awards.
October 28, 2017
Gold Diggers is an extremely interesting read! By the careful crafting of intertwining the stories of several figures in Klondike history as taken from their memoirs, the reader gets a true "feel" for this time and place and the challenges - cold, loneliness, starvation - faced in their search for gold. We of this modern age cannot imagine pursuing the "dream" while enduring such hardships often with no success.
November 17, 2017
I am glad I decided to read this! True accounts of life in Dawson City, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1800s. Taken from diaries, letters, newspaper articles and autobiogriphies this is the story of six very different people who all lived there at the same time and knew each other. Bill Haskell (prospector), Belinda Mulrooney (entrepreneur), Jack London (aspiring writer), Father Judge ("Saint of the Yukon"), Flora Shaw (British reporter) and Colonel Sam Steele (Mountie).
April 1, 2018
This is an engaging and informative book that pulls together many different perspectives and stories related to the Klondike Gold Rush. I appreciated the way in which Gray situated this historical material within modern sensibilities in a nicely balanced way. A fine example of narrative history done well.
November 14, 2018
Charlotte Gray writes reliably readable, interesting books about well chosen corners of Canadian history. I enjoyed this one, in part because it reminded me of my own adventures in the Yukon. However, as Gray herself acknowledges in the epilogue, nothing really beats Pierre Berton's Klondike in telling this story, and I'd have to refer anyone interested in the topic there first.
April 17, 2020
Fascinating read. These individuals gave up so much and for some, claimed so little. Such a difficult lifestyle. And whether they were poor or well off when striving for the gold, all had one thing in common - the hope for finding that gold. This is a definite read for those who are interested in non-fiction and the Gold Rush of the Yukon.
October 6, 2020
An excellent and thorough account of the goldrush in the Yukon, with the rise and fall of Dawson. I now know a lot more than I did. The whole is sympathetically told through the eyes of several individuals who lived through it. Charlotte Gray is a wonderful researcher. One can really visualize the privations of the life there.
November 26, 2022
For en som bare har hatt ett forhold til Klondike og gullgraving knytta til Skrue Mcduck og Don Rosa var dette skikkelig artig og interresant lesing. Boka tar for seg historien, fra start til "slutt" av gullrushet og har stort fokus på de mange forskjellige personene som av forskjellige grunner trakk mot Klondike, om det var for å bli rik, berømt eller konvertere alle til katolikker.
June 28, 2018
3.5 - An intriguing look into a place and time that has always been of great interest to me. The 6 people the book follows were worthy of the time given to them, and the stories were well written, but the book repeated itself in places and could have been more to the point in others.
March 1, 2019
I love reading Charlotte Gray. Her books read like fiction - the people she features are fully realized human beings. This book has been on my list for a long time, and it was certainly worth the wait.
June 17, 2019
I can't imagine anyone has ever thought it was easy to look for gold but this book makes clear just how difficult it was and how many people came away with less than they started with. And, of course, a few came away considerably richer.
August 12, 2019
I bought this book at the MacBride Museum in Whitehorse, Yukon. It’s a wonderful narrative of the Klondike Gold Rush! If you are cruising the Alaska Inner Passage and stopping in Skagway, this book is for you. Someone do a movie based on this book please.
January 10, 2023
Surprisingly compelling history book! Captures not only the craziness around the gold rush but the general atmosphere of the time. Somehow inspires the reader to go north while also wanting nothing whatsoever to do with a gold rush
October 4, 2019
3.5 stars. Engaging read and memorable (real-life) characters. Way better than the Women of the Klondike book I read previously.
January 2, 2020
3.5 stars
April 2, 2020
I watched the History Channel miniseries that this was based on a few years ago. Really enjoyed the series, and finally got to the book. Thoroughly researched and a joy to read
October 2, 2020
*books a trip to Canada*
January 27, 2021
what an interesting read. Really understood, without living it, the hardship of the klondike rush. Great writing with great flow. Highly recommend this book
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