Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Well researched September 2, 2008
J. Etter (Burlington, WI United States)
I had to read this for a book club and didn't make it all the way through. I will give credit for a well researched book. It is a history of endless short accounts of the miners and the women who serviced them. While there are a few interesting characters, the information was limited and left you wanting to know more of the story.
This will be of interest of someone who studies the history or who has visited Alaska and seen the locales of the stories to make a connection.
 Best Of The West! June 15, 2006
Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, a time at the turn of the century, when the gold camps were booming and the dust flowed like wine. Leaving behind law and many of the constraints of the Post-Victorian era, men and women went north to find adventure and wealth. Most found death among the cold frozen mountains and rivers but a few survived to find money, power and, sometimes, even love.
The women found it easier to mine the miners then to mine the mines. Women couldn't work claims in most cases and most of the normal jobs didn't pay well.
If a woman wanted the wealth and adventure she was searching for she ended up becoming a Good Time Girl. Men outnumbered women ten to one and were always willing to pay for the company. Dance hall girls and prostitutes were among the pioneers who opened the new regions, became rich entrepreneurs and powerful women who, in some cases, changed the towns for the better.
But their history cannot be written in a vacuum. As many of them left behind no written records we have to use police logs, old photos and stories left behind by the more respectable women and men of the cities. The book deals with the conditions and events that made the Far North so much different from the lower forty-eight states where many of the women came from. Why did the cities, in many cases, allow a red light district? Why did they give them police protection? How did the women influence the towns and change the very future of the frontier? Why did so many women turn to be Good Time Girls?
With tons of humor, happy endings and sad ones, the chapters within this book give a detailed look at the history of the independent women who faced hardships, lost fortunes and the dangers of a wild land to find a future.
Not Real Interesting October 27, 2005
D. Ritter (Noblesville, Ind)
I was disappointed in this book, it seemed more like a history of the men of the Yukon and Gold Rush . There were some stories about some of these women in there, but they were not very interesting to me, just sort of dry and lacking the quality that you could see and picture the people-which is a quality I look for in books of a historical nature. If you like just a history of cut and dry facts about the Gold Rush and the men etc., this might be ok, but overall, the book failed to be interesting to me.
 Interesting side to the "gold miners" September 28, 2004
G. Powell (Seattle, WA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Well, the men mined the gold, and the women mined the miners. All had unhealthy jobs but it would appear that more womem made money than the men from this book. It is also interesting that many of the women ended their trade by marrying the miners. So while to some they were "soiled doves" to the miners they were princesses.
Still interesting that the town tollerated this business until very recently. An enjoyable read.
Fun history of the world's (c)oldest profession in AK October 10, 2001
Martin Lewison (Monticello, AR United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I bought this book at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks bookstore. My dad, Class of '51 at UAF (we were there for his 50th reunion), had told me some stories about "The Line" and he had had his first job with the gold mining operations, so I was curious. There's not a lot of gory detail here. It's about people and places, but it's quite a colorful history. Though never officially legal, prostitution was tolerated and it flourished in Alaska for more than 50 years. And some very famous characters pop up, like Wyatt Earp and the "Birdman of Alcatraz". Definitely worth the time.
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