Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike

by Brian Castner

Overview

A gripping and wholly original account of the epic human tragedy that was the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98. One hundred thousand men and women rushed heedlessly north to make their fortunes; very few did, but many thousands of them died in the attempt.

In 1897, the United States was mired in the worst economic depression that the country had yet endured. So when all the newspapers announced gold was to be found in wildly enriching quantities at the Klondike River region of the Yukon, a mob of economically desperate Americans swarmed north. Within weeks tens of thousands of them were embarking from western ports to throw themselves at some of the harshest terrain on the planet—in winter yet—woefully unprepared, with no experience at all in mining or mountaineering. It was a mass delusion that quickly proved deadly: avalanches, shipwrecks, starvation, murder.

Upon this stage, author Brian Castner tells a relentlessly driving story of the gold rush through the individual experiences of the iconic characters who endured it. A young Jack London, who would make his fortune but not in gold. Colonel Samuel Steele, who tried to save the stampeders from themselves. The notorious gangster Soapy Smith, goodtime girls and desperate miners, Skookum Jim, and the hotel entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney. The unvarnished tale of this mass migration is always striking, revealing the amazing truth of what people will do for a chance to be rich.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385544504
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

BRIAN CASTNER is the author of Disappointment River, All the Ways We Kill and Die, and the war memoir The Long Walk, which was adapted into an opera. A former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer and veteran of the Iraq War, his journalism and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Esquire, and on NPR. He is a two-time grantee of the Pulitzer Center, and is the co-editor of The Road Ahead: Stories from the Forever War.

Editorial Reviews

02/08/2021

Journalist Castner (Disappointment River) paints a dramatic and frequently gruesome portrait of the Klondike gold rush. In July 1896, prospector George Carmack discovered in a Yukon River tributary “so much gold layered in the slabs of bedrock, he thought they looked like cheese sandwiches.” He staked two claims for himself and his brother-in-law, and rushed to the settlement of Fortymile to file legal paperwork, setting off the largest gold stampede in U.S. history. In 1897, more than 100,000 people set out for the Klondike, most of them woefully ill-prepared for the harsh conditions. According to Castner, 75% of the would-be prospectors “were shipwrecked, shot, suffocated, frozen, starved, drowned, or gave up and went home.” Castner brings the survivors to vivid life, including Arthur Arnold Dietz, who set out with 18 men across the Malaspina Glacier in Alaska to reach the gold strike. Only four survived; the rest fell in crevices, died of scurvy, suffocated in avalanches, or starved to death during their two-year ordeal. Castner also profiles Jack London, who came down with scurvy in the Klondike, and hotelier Belinda Mulrooney, who lost her fortune when Dawson City was destroyed by fire in 1899. Packed with evocative details and colorful personalities, this immersive history captures the tragic consequences of “gold fever.” (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Harrowing. . .Castner brings to life the the last of the great 19th-century North American gold rushes, featuring a cast of characters both illustrious (Jack London, who returned from the Klondike wealthy only in grist for his stories) and infamous (Frederick Trump, grandfather of the former president, who operated a restaurant and brothel) . .[He's] an engrossing writer. . .skillfull in conjuring the social world of the Klondike. . .Mr. Castner’s larger point—that the romantic myth of the frontier continues to obscure the human costs of its absorption and exploitation—shines as brightly as a gold nugget in a mountain stream." —Andrew R. Graybill, The Wall Street Journal 

"Gripping." —The New York Times Book Review

"A riveting tale told with panache and discernment. Castner brings to throbbing life the thousand days of the Klondike rush, and leaves the reader breathless yet edified." —H. W. Brands, author of The Zealot and the Emancipator and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

"Compelling. . .Like Timothy Egan did for the Dust Bowl in The Worst Hard Time, Castner combines oral histories, memoirs, and research to vividly evoke the Yukon Gold Rush through people and nature. . .Readers who enjoy history, adventure, and nature writing, and fans of Egan, Candice Millard, and Jack London, will savor this page-turner.” —Library Journal
 
“Brian Castner’s Stampede is a masterful narrative history—deeply researched, beautifully written, and utterly compelling. Novelistic in the best sense, with vivid characters and carefully reconstructed scenes of life among the prospectors, this book is an endlessly fascinating joy to read.” —Phil Klay, author of Missionaries and winner of the National Book Award 

"A tangy tale of the 19th century’s last, storied gold rush, timed for its 125th anniversary. . .There’s a lot of swagger and a lot of swishing skirts in Castner’s pages, rife with entertaining accounts of all seven deadly sins. . .A vigorous historical page-turner packed with a cast of decidedly colorful (and off-color) actors." —Kirkus Reviews

"This is a story to get lost inside of, a line in the history books brought brilliantly to life. Brian Castner skillfully unwinds the true tale behind the Klondike myth, a moment of collective madness populated by a cast of seekers, hucksters, thieves, and ice-hardened men and women. Stampede is a dazzling tale of greed and resilience, and the gap between promises of endless riches and a reality of bitter struggle." --Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind

"Stampede is a much-needed historical restorative on the true nature of the Klondike Gold Rush. But it is also a timely and vivid account of an encounter between American hubris and the Alaska Factor that ended disastrously, and a reminder of the respect this place deserves." —Matthew Komatsu, Alaskan search and rescue, and Alaska Literary Award winner

"[An] exhilarating account. . .Rich in history, colorful frontier characters, vivid details, and narrative drive, Stampede depicts people in the throes of gold fever and the extreme, frequently calamitous, lengths to which they went in search of wealth." —The Christian Science Monitor 

"Brian Castner has written a gusher of a story, a fast-paced retelling of the saga of gold-rush psychosis for a new generation—with plenty of the good bits, and new discoveries of his own.” —Tom Kizzia, author of the New York Times bestseller Pilgrim’s Wilderness and The Wake of the Unseen Object

“Castner paints a dramatic and frequently gruesome portrait of the Klondike gold rush. . . Packed with evocative details and colorful personalities, this immersive history captures the tragic consequences of 'gold fever.' " —Publishers Weekly

"A ripping tale of ambition, adventure, insanity and greed. Brian Castner tells a big American story of the last big American frontier. I couldn't put this book down." —Elliot Ackerman, author of Red Dress in Black and White and finalist for the National Book Award 

"Brian Castner combines taut prose and vivid scene setting to deliver a gripping narrative about a formative yet largely forgotten period in American history. With appearances by Jack London, Frederick Trump and a lengthy cast of lively characters, Stampede kept me up late, night after night, unable to stop turning the pages." —Clay Risen, author of the Crowded Hour 

“A freight-train of a story that thunders along with all the energy of the tumultuous events it conjures. Sharply told from historical sources, Stampede is a saga of need, greed, and shattered fantasies, and the dark side of the American Dream.” —Caroline Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The Bounty and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award 

From the Publisher

03/05/2021

Journalist and author Castner (Disappointment River) has written a compelling account of the Yukon Gold Rush of 1897–98. His description of the Panic of 1893, and the economic depression that followed, provides an understanding of why people with little or no wilderness and mining experience would leave everything and risk their lives to search for gold. The narrative highlights many of the unique personalities who lived in or traveled to Alaska and the Yukon to strike it rich—and the author tells how few of the prospectors became wealthy. Some, like Jack London, parlayed an unsuccessful gold mining expedition into a successful writing career. The vast majority of prospectors left Alaska with nothing to show for their efforts, and untold thousands died in the attempt. The Carcross/Tagish First Nation, often given short shrift in histories of the Yukon Gold Rush, receives long-overdue serious attention in Castner's account. Like Timothy Egan did for the Dust Bowl in The Worst Hard Time, Castner combines oral histories, memoirs, and research to vividly evoke the Yukon Gold Rush through people and nature. VERDICT Readers who enjoy history, adventure, and nature writing, and fans of Egan, Candice Millard, and Jack London, will savor this page-turner.—Laurie Unger Skinner, Highland Park P.L., IL

Library Journal

2021-01-23
A tangy tale of the 19th century’s last, storied gold rush, timed for its 125th anniversary.

Journalist and Iraq War veteran Castner, who chronicled a comrade’s battlefield death in the excellent All the Ways We Kill and Die (2016), has a fine time depicting the salty, seldom virtuous figures who drifted north to Alaska following the acquisition of the Russian territory in the purchase known as “Seward’s Folly.” There was no folly in it, for the deal opened up a vast new land to economic exploitation, as manifested by the mass arrival of gold-seekers in 1896. Invoking the rational actor theory of economics, the author observes that the boom served the interests of only a very few people in a whirl of pyramid schemes and other scams: “Perhaps ‘Klondicitis’ was the best term for the infectious cloudiness of reason that ran amok,” he writes, also chronicling the racism and contempt for Native peoples that characterized the era. Soon every loose hand in the world, it seemed, was on the way to Dawson City, Juneau, and points north, looking to get rich. Castner’s dramatis personae includes the best known of them all, Jack London, who arrived poor and left pretty much that same way—but with a trove of stories that he would turn into bestsellers. Others are less well known, including a star-crossed band of New Yorkers who were caught by “avalanches, driving winds, plunging temperatures that broke their thermometers” and were reduced to eating their dogs. There’s a lot of swagger and a lot of swishing skirts in Castner’s pages, rife with entertaining accounts of all seven deadly sins, but many of his unfortunates bow in and disappear, even as “the circus left almost as soon as it arrived.”

A vigorous historical page-turner packed with a cast of decidedly colorful (and off-color) actors.

Kirkus Reviews

This dramatic history of the Klondike Gold Rush—narrated by author Brian Castner—grips you from the first minutes. Castner is a compelling storyteller both on the page and as the voice for this audiobook. As narrator, he is as skilled and resourceful as a voice actor. And what a story he has to tell. The rush of unseasoned fortune seekers to one of the harshest and most inaccessible locales on earth is a memorable drama of chance and survival. Jack London figures largely in this history, and Castner shares many of London’s best qualities: a clean, factual narrative style; a high regard for detail and authenticity; and an informed and unaffected voice that wins your trust and holds your ear. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

MAY 2021 - AudioFile

This dramatic history of the Klondike Gold Rush—narrated by author Brian Castner—grips you from the first minutes. Castner is a compelling storyteller both on the page and as the voice for this audiobook. As narrator, he is as skilled and resourceful as a voice actor. And what a story he has to tell. The rush of unseasoned fortune seekers to one of the harshest and most inaccessible locales on earth is a memorable drama of chance and survival. Jack London figures largely in this history, and Castner shares many of London’s best qualities: a clean, factual narrative style; a high regard for detail and authenticity; and an informed and unaffected voice that wins your trust and holds your ear. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

MAY 2021 - AudioFile