Author Description

No event in our history is more celebrated in story and verse than the Yukon Gold Rush. The discovery of rich gold deposits in Bonanza Creek in 1896 triggered a flood of people from all walks of life — and from many countries besides Canada — toward the newly created Dawson City. Hungry prospectors hoped for the one big strike; entrepreneurs, bankers, and prostitutes knew there was money to be made. Newspapers spread “Klondike fever” around the globe, and the government in Ottawa had to contend with a distant, rowdy frontier town that needed law and order. In three years, tens of thousands braved the Chilkoot Pass and the raging Yukon River and endured bitter northern winters for the chance of a lifetime. The native peoples, dispossessed of their ancestral lands, found themselves pushed aside.This is the remarkable story of the Gold Rush, told for the first time through the lives of six very different people: the miner William Haskell; the saintly priest Father Judge; the savvy businesswoman Belinda Mulroney; the young writer Jack London; the imperious British journalist Flora Shaw; and the spit’n’polish Mountie Sam Steele. Brilliantly interweaving their experiences, Gold Diggers presents a fascinating panorama of a subarctic town where miners, saloon keepers, dance hall girls, preachers, and law-makers were thrown together at one extraordinary moment in history. The Gold Rush bred its own glittering mythology, but Charlotte Gray has sifted through the legends to see who really won, and lost, in the race to get rich quick.Charlotte Gray has made the great stories and themes of our history her passion. Through her remarkable vision, people such as Susanna Moodie, Isabel Mackenzie King, Pauline Johnson, and Alexander Graham Bell have come vividly to life. Gold Diggers enables us again to step effortlessly into the past, taking readers on an unforgettable journey into a world gone mad for wealth.