Coming to Seattle from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Aurelia Breighton finds herself in the middle of gold fever. Men are gathering goods and heading to the Klondike. She's twenty-four, and she understands the need to bring lime juice capsules to ward off scurvy, but a stove, a tent, four hundred pounds of flour and two hundred pounds of bacon are on her shopping list. Prices are high and the Canadians won't let her across the border without a year's provisions, and pleading that she's looking for her sister doesn't help.

BAND OF GOLD captures the spirit of the times, when a woman doctor is seen as taking a man's livelihood. Aurelia's grandmother insisted that she get a good education and not be dependent on a man, and also taught her to shoot and gave her younger sister Violet a gold ring. But aged sixteen Violet's head was turned by a rusher, and she ran away to the Klondike with him. Aurelia heads in pursuit but first she meets a man called Clay Guardian, a former bank clerk in Seattle, who took the gold ring as collateral for a loan - that Violet and her partner never repaid.

The sheer logistics of travel are daunting. By boat, by foot and dog-sled, the rushers keep moving, and a woman alone is both rare and at risk. Pooling their resources allows the two main characters to travel lighter and more safely in the rugged country. Packing the goods by stages converts a thirty-three-mile walk into a thousand-mile one, with all the back and forth. Aurelia's expertise is first called upon after an avalanche buries dozens of cheechacos in snow. It won't be the last time.

Many people got into hot water in the frozen North, and it's hard to really take on board today just how extreme the conditions were for rushers. The people making money were those selling supplies or means of transport. Mark Twain's eye-witness accounts back up the details given by Zita Christian. Amid all this hardship it takes an exceptional woman to buckle down and do her share, and it is no wonder that Aurelia makes friends. When she tells one of her friends that she loves him, another man considers the matter and says, "That's better than finding gold, isn't it?" I couldn't agree more. BAND OF GOLD is a fine adventure and romance.