"It's the 1920s, and Bo was headed for an Alaska orphanage when she won the hearts of two tough gold miners who set out to raise her, enthusiastically helped by all the kind people of the nearby Eskimo village"--Provided by publisher.
As their Alaskan village's only survivors of sickness brought by white men one winter early in the twentieth century, sisters Millie, aged thirteen, and Maura, ten, make their way south in hopes of finding someone alive.
In 1917, Aaluk leaves for Siberia while her sister Nutaaq remains in their Alaskan village and becomes one of the few survivors of an influenza epidemic, then in 1986, Nunaaq's great-granddaughter leaves her mother due to a different kind of sickness and returns to the village where they were born.
The story of the heroic role played by sled dogs, including the Siberian husky Togo, in the delivery of antitoxin serum to those stricken with diphtheria in 1925 Nome. Includes historical notes about the event as well as about the Iditarod Sled Dog Race which commemorates it.
Examines territorial expansion in the years following the Civil War and discusses the people and land of Alaska and its purchase from Russia in 1868, the 1896 Klondike Gold Rush, strategic military importance to the U.S., and statehood in 1959.
Contains profiles and photographs of children who went to the Yukon and Alaska during the gold rush age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
