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Summary
Summary
The year is 1900 in gold-prospecting Alaska. Essie, a Midwestern farm girl fleeing from a stormy marriage, joins up with prospectors bound for Nome, where the golden sands teem with dreamers, schemers, and high rollers. When Leonard, Essie's stubborn and volatile husband, travels north, astonishing scenes of pursuit, sacrifice, and crucial decision rise to a conclusion that is both surprising and inevitable. Powerfully evoking a past world and the variable territory of the heart, this novel establishes Peter C. Brown as a consummate storyteller. Reading group guide included.
Author Notes
Peter C. Brown's grandfather was a prospector, the engineer for a gold-mining company in Nome, Alaska. Brown is a retired business consultant, and he and his wife live in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The 1900 gold rush to Nome, Alaska, sweeps up Esther (Essie) Crummey, the resilient and pragmatic title character of this evocative historical novel, Brown's promising debut. A Minnesota farm girl, Essie marries a drifter named Leonard Crummey, a volatile man burdened by a painful past. They begin a life together on their own fledgling farm, but the birth of a deformed son, Gabriel, and the devastation of their farm by a flood turn Leonard into a "hard husband." His alcoholism and unilateral decision to sell much of their land corrodes their marriage. After further disaster, Essie leaves. Headed for her sister's in Seattle, Essie helps in a dockside accident on a Nome-bound ship, an intervention through which she meets Nate Deaton, the earnest, East Coast-educated young foreman for the Cape Nome Company. He hires her for the Nome venture, and mutual respect and conversation draw them together despite their varied backgrounds. But a beleaguered, die-hard Leonard follows his wife to Nome, where he threatens the budding devotion between Nate and Essie. This is an eloquent, memorable first novel, with high-powered characters whose prickly exteriors, created out of the need to survive, hide affectingly yearning and haunted souls. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
All about passion, whether for flesh or fortune, romance or adventure, this sweeping debut renders poetically the dynamics of desire. As the 20th century dawns, intrepid Essie Crummey joins gold prospectors heading far north. Stark, remote, exotic Alaska, she senses, will free her from Midwestern malaise, the small life of a farmer's wife. A fugitive from an abusive marriage, she draws close to Nate Deaton, visionary foreman of the Cape Nome Company, whose dreams are Promethean--he intends to "establish the largest steam dredge in the history of mining on the entire Seward Peninsula"--but whose spirit is gentle. Laconic, introspective, he's a bird-fancier, a bit of a nature mystic. He hires Essie to tend the company's horses, and she thrives at that tough, ministering labor. But she's haunted. Dogging her trail is her past with Leonard, the husband she has spurned. The id incarnate, a dark, rapacious brooder out of D.H. Lawrence, he's as enamored of his jug and his tantrums as he is of Essie. He is, moreover, ferociously possessive. And as he begins stalking the woman who dared flee him, she's torn between two embodiments of male energy--Nate, stalwart and strong, and Leonard, unchecked force. Violent lyricism animates Brown's prose and powerful zest drives his saga. Characters such as Major French, battle-scarred veteran of San Juan Hill, and Alexander McKenzie, a doughty entrepreneur and psychic brother to the Carnegies and Vanderbilts, help make the historical spirit of the story ring true, and descriptions of period sea-faring and gold-digging help the reader experience the past. And yet it's as a tale of perennial obsessions--greed, sex, love and fevered need--that the book really works. Bold, occasionally brutal. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
After a tragic barn fire kills her son, farm-girl Esther flees her difficult marriage. The year is 1900, and Esther winds up being hired to take care of horses on their way to the Alaska gold rush. On the boat to Alaska, Esther befriends a college-educated black woman, a prospector, and Nate, the foreman of the gold company that hired her. Once in Alaska, all begin to find a new way of living in the world. Unlike many historical novels about women that fall prey to an anachronistic form of feminism and multiculturalism, Esther's thoughts and actions seem realistic to both her character and the time period. The novel is also free of stereotypes. An unusual time frame adds a sense of mystery and helps propel the plot forward. A smooth and interesting read. --Marta Segal Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In 1900, Nome, AK, looks a whole lot better to adventurous Essie than the Midwest-but what if her husband comes after her? A promising debut. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.