Book Description

about race than this first novel by Jack London. Set in northern Canada during the gold rush on the Klondike, it's also a mixed bag of yarns about miners and adventurers on the north frontier. The daughter of the snows title is Frona Welse a spirited and fiercely independent young woman whose main grievance is that she wasn't born male. Being a woman she has to settle for living vicariously through the lives of adventurous men. There's also the nuisance of amorous advances by men who don't live up to her ideals. The novel begins as Frona steps off the boat at Dyea, Alaska, where she grew up at a trading post. A young woman of 20, she has been away for ten years, getting an education in the States. Now returned, she is hardly changed from the free-spirited motherless child who was once friends with the men who trapped and prospected in the Canadian interior. Chilkoot Pass, 1898 With the gold rush in full swing, she crosses the Chilkoot Pass with thousands of others and heads for Dawson City, in the Yukon. There her father, Jacob Welse, seems to own and run every enterprise in the territory. As autumn darkens into sub-arctic winter, there are new arrivals, including Corliss, a tenderfoot mining engineer and Gregory St. Vincent, a journalist and world traveler. There's a lot of talk and little action, however, until the last chapters when miners and prospectors head up river to wait for the spring thaw. As the river ice is breaking up, Frona and the others discover a man in some distress on the other side of the raging torrent. She and two of the men paddle a canoe across to attempt a rescue. Braving the surging waters and dodging ice floes, they bring him back. Almost home free, they are caught in the path of a massive ice jam that breaks loose, flinging them ashore and crushing one of them to death. On the heels of that narrow escape, Frona discovers a miners court in session. They have been called together to hear evidence against St. Vincent, who has been falsely accused of a double murder. Acting as his attorney, she argues persuasively for acquittal, but the jury is set on seeing him hang. Stricken by guilt, he finally admits to watching the killing of the victims without lifting a finger to prevent either death. When the killer, an avenging Indian, materializes at the last moment to confirm St. Vincent's story, he is saved from execution. Corliss and Frona Romance. Frona is a hero worshiper and would only be happy with a man like her larger-than-life father. St. Vincent first clicks with her because he has been an intrepid adventurer who has explored remote regions of the world, finding "life and strife" almost everywhere. She takes to him for his "healthful, optimistic spirit." Expecting love to come to her in a "great white flash," she mistakes a display of the aurora borealis for a sign and agrees to marry him. But St. Vincent wins her utter contempt when he admits to doing nothing to prevent the murders. Having accepted food and lodging from the victims, he was bound by the code of the North to help defend them. Meanwhile, Corliss slowly shows that he's equal to the North. He demonstrates his grit on the ice-strewn and turbulent river by bravely risking his life to go to the aid of a complete stranger. Frona has turned him down once, saying she only wants him as a friend. We aren't told at the end, but maybe he has a chance to win her heart again...