Odyssey to the North: North-Western Stories

It was the great gold rush to Alaska that began in 1897 that gave birth to the North-Western story. Many of the authors' names are immediately recognizable: not only Jack London, but Robert Service, Rex Beach, James Oliver Curwood, Max Brand, all of whose Northland fiction has inspired motion pictures. The setting in these stories is a primordial world, one in which rigorous activity is made necessary because the climate freezes everything. The veneer of civilization on the men and women who answer this challenge vanishes, leaving individuals faced with having to live by cunning, instinct, and sometimes ruthlessness.