Jennifer Alexandra Duncan

Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of the Klondike by Jennifer Duncan offers brief biographies of eight women who played significant roles in Dawson, Yukon Territory, during the Klondike gold rush. The author profiles Shaaw Tláa (Kate Carmack), Émilie Fortin Tremblay, Anna DeGraf, Belinda Mulrooney, Martha Louise Black, Klondike Kate Rockwell, Nellie Cashman, and Faith Fenton. These women truly led amazing lives; each had a personal drive that led her to ignore Victorian era constraints on the lives of women. A brief epilogue describes the lives of several women who are active in the Dawson community today.

Assembled in one place, these biographies are inspiring, and provide welcome counterpoint to the common impression that all women who participated in the gold rush were dance-hall girls (or worse). Unfortunately, the author’s credulity leads her to accept the most extravagant claims made by these women – who were all experts at self-promotion.

The author is a city dweller (Toronto), and is understandably impressed by the scenic beauty and the frontier spirit of Dawson. It may be hard to check the facts, when these women tried so hard to disguise their tracks. One indication of the depth of research is the author's breathless reporting of the claim by one current resident that she had all of her children reading by age two!

This book was a good read overall, but I wish the author had dug deeper to describe the daily realities, rather than focusing on flamboyant highlights.… (mehr)