Q:
Why did you decide to focus your new book on Jack London's experiences in the
Klondike Gold Rush?
A:
I love adventure. I love gold. I love all things North. And I love stories.
Jack London’s experience in the Klondike gave him the settings and characters
and the history that he needed to write his most memorable books.
At
21 he got swept up in the Stampede, along with thousands who left their homes
and jobs and rushed north to Dawson in the Yukon Territory to stake their
claims. (Dawson is where the Klondike River flows into the bigger Yukon).
It
was a grueling journey over mountain passes and down the massive Yukon
River. For most, it was a bust; they ran
out of money and supplies; they abandoned hope and sometimes lost their lives;
their claims never delivered.
Jack
too failed to find gold, but he was able to capture the human side of the Gold
Rush in his writing. That relationship between adventure and creativity is what
excites me.
Q:
How did you research the book, and what did you learn that might seem
particularly surprising?
A:
I’ve been to the Yukon Territory several times. Years ago I paddled the Yukon
River by canoe from Whitehorse to Dawson, then returned to the Territory to
revisit places along the Klondike Stampede Trail.
What
I loved about researching this book were the wonderful people I met along the
way, historians and experts on Jack London and the First Nations of Canada.
One
Canadian historian stands out. David Neufeld from Whitehorse arranged a float
plane trip into Lake Lindeman on the upper part of the Chilkoot Trail where
Jack and the other Stampeders had to build boats for the long river trip down
to Dawson.
David
took me through the history of the Stampede when we walked the upper parts of
the trail. He made the history come alive. He helped me understand that this
was a trading route for the people of the First Nations long before it had
anything to do with gold.
Q:
What impact did his time in the Klondike have on London's subsequent career?
A:
Jack had always wanted to be a published writer. When he got back to San
Francisco after a year in the Klondike, he gathered his experiences into a
series of Klondike stories that people wanted to read. In 1903 when he was 27, The
Call of the Wild made him famous, and was soon followed by White Fang.
The
Klondike helped launch Jack’s career as a published writer. Writing at least
1000 words a day for 16 years, he was able to publish 50 books. Although he
went on to write about many other subjects, it was the Klondike Gold Rush that
led to his most memorable tales.
Q:
How successful was he at finding gold?
A:
Not at all. Jack came back with only a little pouch of gold dust. He had to
pawn it in order to eat. Perhaps it’s a cliché, but true nevertheless, that
Jack’s gold was the experience itself.
Q:
What are you working on now?
A:
My next adventure biography is about the father of polar exploration, Norwegian
Fridtjof Nansen, and his Fram expedition of 1893-96. Nansen made a daring attempt to be the first
to reach the North Pole.
In
his day the Arctic was the last frontier, cloaked in mystery, as unknown as the
moon. People thought there might be land or even an open sea beyond the ice at
the pole itself. So in 1893, Nansen was
determined to reach the North Pole before anyone else and solve its mysteries.
On
June 24, 1893, he and a small crew of 12 on board a specially designed ship
called the Fram (meaning “forward” in Norwegian), attempted to make
it to the Pole in a way that most polar experts thought was simply crazy.
Nansen
planned to lock his ship into the polar ice pack and “float” on top of the ice
carried by the currents to the pole and over to the other side of the globe. Above
Siberia, the Fram got locked into ice, just as it was designed to do, and it
drifted for a year and a half at about a mile or two a day.
When
it seemed his ship would miss the pole by a few hundred miles, Nansen decided
to make a mad dash for it with another crewmember. They took 28 huskies, 2
kayaks, and 3 sleds heavily loaded with gear and food for 100 days. Their
attempt on the pole is one of the great adventure stories of all time.
Q:
Anything else we should know?
A:
Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush took five years to write. My first draft
was hopelessly academic and off the mark. I thought I could tell the story of Jack’s
journey up the Inside Passage to the coast of Alaska, then over the Coast
Mountains and down the Yukon River to Dawson, by using his own words, by simply
drawing on the wonderful descriptions of scenes and characters from his stories
and novels.
But
in revision I learned more about storytelling, and I am immensely grateful to
my editor, Christy Ottaviano at Henry Holt, who guided me along the way. It was
well worth the wait to get it right.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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