Tales of the Klondyke

This is Jack London's second collection of short stories, first published in 1901. All the stories take place during the Klondike gold rush in Alaska, the Yukon Territory, or elsewhere in the North. About half of the stories feature the inhabitants of Forty Mile, the recurring cast of characters that were introduced in his first collection. In this book London is still finding his way as a writer, and this selection of tales is a mixture of the masterpiece and the mediocre.

The two best stories in the book are similarly titled, though couldn't be more different. In "The Grit of Women," Indian trail guide Sitka Charley relates the story of how he and his wife Passuk made a grueling 700 mile journey to the Bering Sea during a time of famine. It's the type of gritty odyssey of man (and woman) struggling against harsh conditions that London does best. In "The Scorn of Women," the three most attractive women in Dawson vie for the attention of a clueless mining king as his fiancee makes the long trip up from the States. It's a lighthearted and clever comedy of manners, not the kind of thing London usually excels at, but this one works. Women feature prominently in many of the stories, ranging from devoted angels to evil femme fatales, and are always depicted as more intelligent and hard working than their male counterparts.