Veteran Heritage Books author Ed Ferrell offers a new collection of hair-raising true tales about pioneers in Alaska, the Yukon and the northern Pacific region. Hundreds of people perished in the North during the early mining era. In 1918 the steamship Princess Sophia took all hands and passengers—343 people—to their deaths. The irony in this is that none of them had to die. For reasons unknown, Sophia’s captain turned down several offers from other boats to transfer passengers.
But it was a hardy breed of men and women who opened up the last frontier, and they tell some amazing survival stories. Take William Royden, for example. He lived through a mauling by a brown bear, then walked and crawled through the woods for seven days to get help.
The author has selected twenty-six accounts of death and survival that chronicle the harsh realities of life on the northern frontier. These accounts were found in newspapers and magazines. The pioneers who experienced these events have long since mushed over the Long Trail. Here are their stories, often in their own words. This is the North you will never read about in the travel brochures.
Ed Ferrell
(1998), 2013, 5½x8½, paper, 174 pp.
ISBN: 9780788410659
101-F1065
