Book Description

Billy Orange, pugnacious little Irishman, five foot nothing and scared of nobody, rescues a man from a beating in a back alley in Seatle, and finds himself caught up in the Great Gold Rush to the Klondike. Arctic midwinter conditions, unscrupulous tricksters, romance, and death, test him, but nothing can stop him. From the Author My wife and I spent 10 weeks in the area in the Klondike fulfillment of my lifetime's ambition to go there. We panned on Bonanza, got eaten by mosquitoes, but found no gold; we gambled at Diamond Tooth Gertie's and lost our money; we sat out on the veranda of our B&B and drank whisky until near midnight and got sunburned, and we followed Granddad's tracks where we could - up the White Pass and along part of Lake Bennett. We walked stretches of the banks of the Yukon but never got to St. Michael. We sailed through the icebergs on Prince William Sound, out of Valdez, and spent days ferry boating up and down the Inside Passage, followed Humpback whales and caught salmon. Most of all though we sat and drank in the atmosphere, which is still well capable of kick starting a lively imagination like mine. It was a wonderful trip, and gave more meaning to Granddad's tales and to those of others who have chronicled the period and it sharpened my appetite to know even more. I've read and re-read Pierre's Berton's substantive book Klondike, a definitive volume full of incredible detail and marvelously readable. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone hungry for more on "The Last Great Gold Rush", as he puts it. I also enjoyed a much less well known book, A Hard Road to Klondike, by Michael MacGowan, and Garnet Basque's Gold Panners Manual, as well as watching every TV programme and video recording that I have come across. Some data from each of them has been grafted into Granddad's story to flesh it out and to provide continuity. For this I am more grateful than I can say, and I thank the writers and publishers of these books for permitting me to pick their brains. Alan Grainger Dublin 2004 Excerpts