Books like Flint & Feather — picked by fans

Author Jennifer Duncan an adventurous person herself, went to the Yukon a hundred years after the Klondike Gold Rush and lived in Dawson City, now a picturesque historical heritage town where the saloons and dancehalls replay the raucous social times of the 1890s gold rush.

Her book gives a real feel for the place and the remarkable women who grappled their way across the continent and north to the land of the midnight sun. They turned themselves into smart businesswomen and made fortunes without digging for gold.

A diligent researcher, Duncan casts a new light on who first discovered gold in the Klondike. Not the American Carmack but his Indigenous wife, Kate who let him take the credit for the discovery. He later denied her as his wife and abandoned her.   

Pierre Berton, a great popular history writer with a big research team, captures the full scope of the Klondike Gold Rush, from its exciting beginning to its bedraggled ending.

A kind of swashbuckling character himself, he grew up in Dawson City then made his way as a talented writer and broadcaster to fame and fortune across Canada. He astutely describes the wide range of characters who rushed to the Klondike from various countries making history in dramatic and sometimes comic ways.

This informative history book is a delight to read. 

I did a lot of research before writing my book. I’ve always written realistic fiction inspired by real people and places. But this novel was driven by a dog, my first Alaskan Malamute whom I called Yukon Sally.

I’ve always had a dog, some kind of Collie from a farm or an animal shelter. After my youngest daughter flew off to university I thought we could spring for a purebred and chose a Malamute because they come from Arctic wolves.

Intrigued by Yukon’s wolf-like traits I researched wolves then the Malamute breed and took Yukon Sally to the Yukon to study sled dogs and the background of the Klondike Gold Rush which was the glory days of the Malamute sled dogs.

While there, I discovered Bob Hayes’ book and learned some more important facts about wolves. They do not need to be culled. Read it and see why. 

Robert Service became a bank clerk in the Klondike Gold Rush. But that was to support his life as a poet.

At one time he lived and wrote in a log cabin now standing across the road from the house in Dawson City where Pierre Berton grew up. Pierre Berton was born long after Robert Service, but the poems of Robert Service have been popular for generations.

They portray the life and characters of the Yukon around the time of the gold rush. Pierre Berton gave many public performances reciting the whole of Service’s The Shooting of Dan McGrew. No one could do it better. I joined others rising to our feet in applause and whistles.

There is a Malamute Saloon named after a line in that famous poem which I took my Yukon Sally to in Dawson City. My photo of that brings tears to my eyes.    

Hatter Fox is one of those rare stories which causes me to lose my sense of self.

There is no who am I, how am I, or why am I, none of that matters, all that matters is the story. This story is so real, and shows so accurately what can happen to young minds when they are raised in an oppressive, prejudiced environment.

Hatter Fox also exemplifies the true power of fiction, in that it allows us to shed a tear. We steel ourselves against the harsh realities of life, and do not weep for the downtrodden, but for fictional characters, we are free to feel our sorrows.

This novel won the National Book Award and it’s easy to see why. Written by a Native author about reservation life, it discusses a crime that occurred that—like many reservation crimes—went unsolved for a long time.

The book is informative and compelling, and it weaves Native practices and culture into the story. I found it particularly interesting because it includes characters and themes that resonated with my experiences.

This superb book is a culturally and indigenous-language-focused study of women in four central Mesoamerican native societies—Aztecs (Nahuas), Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe.

In addition to a deep dive into texts dealing with all facets of women’s lives, Sousa uses visual evidence to great effect, showing how images contain much information about women’s and gender history, a history in which women struggled over centuries to maintain agency and authority despite efforts by a newly imposed colonial state to erode their power and status and exploit their labor.

I had never read this author before, and I was immediately struck by Ambai’s powerful voice in these stories about the small but constant tensions in ordinary women’s lives in India. Having grown up in India, I felt as if I knew these women and their stories intimately. In particular, the title story instantly made me think of my mother and so many other women toiling at their housework in Indian kitchens, which in middle-class Indian homes are not that comfortable at all.

I found great wisdom, truth, and energy in these atmospheric stories. They are also a refreshing change from the writing style of Western writers in their directness and the incorporation of almost-surreal elements in many, which makes a reader feel them so much more sharply.

I was in my forties, the first time I ever read a novel about a Gujarati American family, and this was the one. I was on a beach in Mexico, experiencing for the first time what it felt like to see my comfort foods, my family’s mannerisms, and my culture’s ideologies represented in a book. The story is told from the perspective of three generations of women in a family and it made me think about my own relationships with my mother and grandmother, and what secrets each of them may be carrying because nothing is ever as simple as it seems. 

Sally is the moving account of the true story of a captive Indian girl who lived in the house of Brigham Young as a servant and cook, a “wild” woman who had been “tamed” by her civilized captors. When she had almost forgotten her own language Sally was sent off to a Mormon village as the wife of a Pahvant Ute chief in order to “civilize” the local surrounding Indians. Sally’s story asks us what these seemingly simple words “wild” and “tame” really mean, and to think about what they can hide.