I was attracted to this book at an estate sale by the name and cover art. I am regularly interested in adventure novels and this looked like one.
Indeed it is however it has a feel of a sales brochure sometimes; selling the attributes of Alaska and the folks that go there.
Once again we see witness the abhorrence of the the rural class for the cities. This is made abundantly clear.
Good story... old men, young woman... intrigue and deception, American politics, it has it all
In this paragraph we learn of the inevitable end of migration as the last frontier is inhabited.
"He was happy. Love of life swept in an irresistible surge through his body, and he breathed in deeply of the soft sea air that came in through his open port from the west. In Stampede Smith he had at last found the comradeship which he had missed, and the responsive note to the wild and half-savage desires always smoldering in his heart. He looked out at the stars and smiled up at them, and his soul was filled with an unspoken thankfulness that he was not born too late. Another generation and there would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more and the world would lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention and what the human race called progress."
We are sitting at the 100 year mark past what Curwood viewed as the world in the shackles of science and invention. Who knew that the shackles would come in the form of limitless input from a little screen a foot away from our faces?
Curwood fits right in with Wister, Roosevelt, and the manly view of the conquering the Continent.
This old copy printed in 44 was just in time for the boys coming back from the War.
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