Gold Diggers: A Run for Their Money

It was a rafting adventure that took Canadian writer Charlotte Gray to the Yukon in 2008.

But what she brought home was an intense curiosity about the reckless, obsessive characters swept up in the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890's.

Why, she wondered, would anyone have hurled themselves into such an unforgiving place, so far beyond the horizon's rim?

She answered her own question by doing what she does best: writing a book on the subject.

Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike chronicles the complicated and overlapping lives of six such obsessives: Bill Haskell, a gumboot miner; Father Judge, a Jesuit priest ; Belinda Mulrooney, a flinty 25-year-old entrepreneur; Sam Steele, the heroic Mountie, Jack London, the writer, and Flora Shaw, a special correspondent for the Times of London.

The result is a fascinating look into the grit and grime of the Gold Rush and how six lives that would never have crossed otherwise, did.

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada's best-known writers. She's the author of seven books of literary non-fiction, including Reluctant Genius, the Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell.

She was born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics.

She is a Recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history and Chair of the board of Canada's History Society.

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