Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
When the story broke on the streets of New York, it took off like a wildfire on a windy day.
"Gold!" Jason shouted at the top of his lungs. "Read all about it! Gold discovered in Alaska!"
The sturdy fifteen-year-old newsboy waving the paper in front of Grand Central Depot had arrived in New York only five days before, after nearly a year spent working his way across the continent.
"Gold ship arrives in Seattle!" Jason yelled. "EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it! Prospectors from Alaska. Two tons of gold!"
The headline, GOLD IN ALASKA, spanned the width of the entire page, the letters were so enormous.
People were running toward him like iron filings to a magnet. He was selling the New York Herald hand over fist. His sack was emptying so fast, it was going to be only a matter of minutes before he was sold out.
"Prospectors from Alaska arrive in Seattle! Two tons of gold!"
Jason wanted to shout, Seattle is where I'm from! but instead he repeated the cry "Gold ship arrives in Seattle," all the while burning with curiosity. Beyond the fact that the ship had arrived this very day--this momentous seventeenth of July, 1897--he knew nothing except what was in the headlines. He hadn't even had a chance to read the story yet.
It was unbelievable, all this pushing and shoving. A woman was giving a man a purse-beating over his head for knocking her aside. "Skip the change!" a man in a dark suit cried amid the crush, pressing a silver dollar into Jason's hand for the five-cent newspaper. "Just give me the paper!"
When there was only one left, Jason took off running with it like a dog with a prizebone. In the nearest alley, he threw himself down and began to devour the story.
At six o'clock this morning a steamship sailed into Seattle harbor fromAlaska with two tons of gold aboard. Five thousand people streamed fromthe streets of Seattle onto Schwabacher's Dock to meet the gold ship, the Portland.<
