The Rush reclaims women’s history of the Klondike Gold Rush
British author Beth Lewis has done what few novelists who wrote about the Klondike Gold Rush have attempted: written a historical crime novel centred entirely on women of the Klondike Gold Rush. Beth Lewis’s novel The Rush, published in June 2025, weaves together the stories of women who are based on Emma Kelly, Belinda Mulrooney, and Harriet Pullen—all women who came to the Yukon during the gold rush. The author used them as inspiration and the core of her fictionalized characters who are confronted with a murder mystery set in Dawson City.
Between 1896 and 1899, approximately 100,000 prospectors attempted the journey to the Klondike Goldfields, but only about 30,000 made it, with many arriving too late to strike it rich. Ten percent of the stampeders were women who followed their men or ended up in Dawson to work as prostitutes. However, there were other women as well, such as Kate, a journalist.
The reader follows Kate, a journalist, from Skagway to Dawson City. She has a horrific experience on the Dead Horse Trail and survives an avalanche on the White Pass, but loses her guide to the mass of snow. She was the first woman to canoe the White Horse Rapids. She liked it so much that she did it twice. Meanwhile, at the Fairview Hotel in Dawson, businesswoman Martha Malone tries to protect her hotel and her girls from local gangster Bill Mathers.
And then there is Ellen, a miner’s wife, trapped in an unhappy marriage to Charlie. When Molly, one of Martha’s prostitutes, is murdered, their three stories weave together into a mystery that will change their lives.
Real women behind them
Lewis drew each character from real Klondike women. Kate is based on Emma Kelly, the journalist from Chicago who became the first woman to canoe the White Horse Rapids, and enjoyed it so much, she did it twice. There are many written records from her experiences that the author used for research. Martha combines the spirit of two women: Harriet Pullen, who was famous for her apple pies in Skagway and built the Pullen Hotel; and Belinda Mulrooney, known as the richest woman of the Klondike, who ran the Fairview Hotel in Dawson. She owned several gold claims and it is said that she had a sluice box running in her saloon to collect the gold dust that her customers lost.
Even the victim of the murder has historical roots: Molly Walsh ran a tent on the trail and married an abusive man who killed her. She was mourned by a heartbroken suitor who commissioned a statue in Skagway, which is still standing today.
An interesting role is that of the fortune teller, a woman who appears and disappears, and tells “men what they wanted to hear, and women what they needed to hear.”
Lewis captures the brutal atmosphere of the gold rush in Dawson, in exact detail: fortunes made overnight and lost even faster, Mounties turning a blind eye to murders in the street, and local gangster Bill Mathers controlling half the town.
A woman in the Klondike was either a prostitute or a miner’s wife. But some brave women were none of those and had to protect themselves: “A woman must save herself,” writes Lewis.
Lewis has never set foot in the Yukon, a fact that makes her detailed story of Dawson’s chaos and the trail’s dangers all the more impressive. In a podcast on BBC Radio 2, the author says that she found research surprisingly easy: “There were so many writers going to the Klondike.” She read the written records of journalist Emma Kelly. Also, there are lots of pictures of the stampeders because Kodak just released a portable camera, years before the gold rush, and it was much easier to take pictures.Beth Lewis says that as a child she was fascinated by stories of Jack London. Lewis says she has been carrying this idea for years. And now it is out in The Rush by Beth Lewis, published by Pegasus Books.
