Author | James Michener |
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Language | English |
Genre | Historical novel |
Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 1989 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Pages | 224pp. |
ISBN | 0-394-57826-0 |
Journey, a novel by James Michener published in 1989, was expanded from a section originally cut from his large novel Alaska (1988). The book depicts five men, one of whom being an English Lord (Lord Luton), who journey from Great Britain through Canada to Dawson, Yukon in 1897-99 to participate in the Klondike gold rush. According to the novel's afterword, the section was cut from the original book because Alaska already contained a chapter on the Alaskan side of the gold rush. It was decided that chapter (which eventually became Journey) could stand on its own as a short novel.[1][2]
Directed by Lord Luton, the group purposefully embarks on a more difficult than normal route available to pioneers of the era, purely to ensure that they remain the entire route on British soil, avoiding American territory which Luton has a patriotic aversion against. Along the way they encounter the Athabasca Landing, the Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie River, Fort Norman (a remote Hudson's Bay Company outpost), exploding ice floes in springtime, starvation, scurvy, swarming Arctic mosquitoes and members of the native Hän group.