Overview

Seeking adventure and the desire to experience life, Young Jamie Douglas, armed with a law degree from Edinburgh university, sets out for Alaska, spurred on by news of the Klondike gold rush of 1896-99. On the voyage from Seattle, he meets his first friend, Robert Banks, a young American averse to hard work but keen to make his fortune in the gold fields. He also meets Soapy Smith, a conman determined to become the Boss of Skagway. Arriving in Skagway, he finds a lawless town, a town ruled by the gun, a town of saloons, dancehalls, gambling dens and brothels, and engages with his first enemies. He is befriended by a native of the Frozen North, a member of the Athabascan tribe, a young man known as Charlie Half-Breed, who comes to his aid and suggests they join forces in their search for the yellow metal. Charlie introduces Rob and Jamie to Gwyn Thomas, a derelict Welshman about to give in to the hardships and wanting to return home. The four young men set out along the White Pass Trail, a trail that has broken many before them, eventually reaching Lake Bennett, where they build their boat ready for the journey down the Yukon River to Dawson, a town in Canada under the jurisdiction of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It is while they camp for the winter at the lake that Jamie makes further enemies and befriends Flora, a sled dog abandoned by her master. Reaching the gold fields, they stake their claim along with Charlie’s father, an American, sink their shafts and, at the end of summer assay their gold, after meeting Charlie’s sisters, Jenny and Margaret. Gwyn decides to spend the winter on the gold fields, guarding their claim, Rob to spend his money in Dawson; Charlie and Jamie return to Skagway. On their return, now wealthy men, they come across Soapy Smith and his gang, men who have both terrorised and befriended the town for their own ends and where justice, Skagway-style, breaks out involving the whole town. Again, back in Dawson, each young man faces his destiny, one brought about by their own natures and inclinations: Gwyn on the gold fields, Rob in Dawson, Jamie and Charlie back in Skagway, where the final conflict between the law of the native people faces white man’s justice. This novel is a work of fiction but many of the characters in the story are real people who lived and worked in the Yukon at the time. Whenever I have taken the liberty to use such people I have done so with respect, attributing to them what they said and did at the time or ensuring that what they say and do in this story is in character. My wife and I visited Skagway in 2014 and it was what I learned there from the National Park rangers and my admiration for the writings of Jack London that led me to write this novel. I hope I have done justice to both.

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James Warden was a teacher for forty years and retired in 2006. He now enjoys his retirement as much as he enjoyed his time in the education service. He writes every morning. He acts in several Norwich theatres and this experience informs his writing. His stage adaptation of Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning was performed at the Sewell Barn Theatre in November 2009. His original play, Letters from a Boy in the Trenches, which was based on the letters of a WW1 soldier, was performed in Marchington, Staffordshire in 2015.He and his wife travel as much as possible. They have taken several holidays in Mediterranean resorts – the basis for his first novel, Three Women of a Certain Age, which was published in July 2010, and Bingham Goes to Cannes, to be published in 2024. His voyage to Alaska in 2014 provided the experiences for The Lawyer of Skagway. His play scripts for children include the one that formed the basis for his children’s story, The Great Gobbler and his Home Baking Factory at the North Pole, which he wrote in 1982 and published in December 2010.He has three sons and they inspired three of his novels – The Vampire’s Homecoming, which was published in 2011, and The One-eyed Dwarf, published in 2012 and The Haunting of Thornham Staithe published in 2022.

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