James A. Michener · 1988 · sea

James Michener's 1988 epic of the far north. Alaska's story unfolds across the ages - the first hunters crossing the Bering land bridge from Siberia, Vitus Bering's Russians plundering the Aleutians for furs and raising their capital at Sitka, and the frenzied gold-rush stampede over the passes from Skagway to the Klondike diggings at Dawson - a saga of a hard and magnificent land.

1. 1
   Siberia

   Across a vanished land bridge from Siberia come the first people, following the mammoth into an empty continent; and from these same shores, millennia later, Vitus Bering sails east in 1741 to find the coast of Alaska for the Tsar.

2. 2
   Kodiak

   Russian promyshlenniki follow the sea-otter east through the Aleutian chain, enslaving and slaughtering the Aleuts, and plant their brutal fur-trading empire on the island of Kodiak.

3. 3
   Sitka

   Aleksandr Baranov raises the capital of Russian America at Sitka on its wooded sound, a far-flung outpost of the Tsar's empire - until, in 1867, the whole of Alaska is sold to the United States.

4. 4
   Skagway

   When gold is struck in the Klondike, a hundred thousand dreamers pour through the lawless boomtown of Skagway and up over the murderous Chilkoot Pass toward the interior.

5. 5
   Dawson

   Down the headwater lakes and the Yukon River the stampeders drift to Dawson and the goldfields - most to find every good claim long staked, the real fortunes made off the miners rather than the gold.