 "Well researched" | 2008-09-02 |
| - Reviewed By bibelotrn |
| I had to read this for a book club and didn't make it all the way through. I will give credit for a well researched book. It is a history of endless short accounts of the miners and the women who serviced them. While there are a few interesting characters, the information was limited and left you wanting to know more of the story. br /br /This will be of interest of someone who studies the history or who has visited Alaska and seen the locales of the stories to make a connection. |
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 "Best Of The West!" | 2006-06-15 |
| - Reviewed By barrie7 |
The Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, a time at the turn of the century, when the gold camps were booming and the dust flowed like wine. Leaving behind law and many of the constraints of the Post-Victorian era, men and women went north to find adventure and wealth. Most found death among the cold frozen mountains and rivers but a few survived to find money, power and, sometimes, even love.
The women found it easier to mine the miners then to mine the mines. Women couldn't work claims in most cases and most of the normal jobs didn't pay well.
If a woman wanted the wealth and adventure she was searching for she ended up becoming a Good Time Girl. Men outnumbered women ten to one and were always willing to pay for the company. Dance hall girls and prostitutes were among the pioneers who opened the new regions, became rich entrepreneurs and powerful women who, in some cases, changed the towns for the better.
But their history cannot be written in a vacuum. As many of them left behind no written records we have to use police logs, old photos and stories left behind by the more respectable women and men of the cities. The book deals with the conditions and events that made the Far North so much different from the lower forty-eight states where many of the women came from. Why did the cities, in many cases, allow a red light district? Why did they give them police protection? How did the women influence the towns and change the very future of the frontier? Why did so many women turn to be Good Time Girls?
With tons of humor, happy endings and sad ones, the chapters within this book give a detailed look at the history of the independent women who faced hardships, lost fortunes and the dangers of a wild land to find a future.
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| "Not Real Interesting" | 2005-10-27 |
| - Reviewed By dlrhome |
| I was disappointed in this book, it seemed more like a history of the men of the Yukon and Gold Rush . There were some stories about some of these women in there, but they were not very interesting to me, just sort of dry and lacking the quality that you could see and picture the people-which is a quality I look for in books of a historical nature. If you like just a history of cut and dry facts about the Gold Rush and the men etc., this might be ok, but overall, the book failed to be interesting to me. |
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 "Interesting side to the "gold miners"" | 2004-09-28 |
| - Reviewed By gwpowell@hotmail.com |
Well, the men mined the gold, and the women mined the miners. All had unhealthy jobs but it would appear that more womem made money than the men from this book. It is also interesting that many of the women ended their trade by marrying the miners. So while to some they were "soiled doves" to the miners they were princesses.
Still interesting that the town tollerated this business until very recently. An enjoyable read. |
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| "Fun history of the world's (c)oldest profession in AK" | 2001-10-10 |
| - Reviewed By martinsusedbooks |
| I bought this book at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks bookstore. My dad, Class of '51 at UAF (we were there for his 50th reunion), had told me some stories about "The Line" and he had had his first job with the gold mining operations, so I was curious. There's not a lot of gory detail here. It's about people and places, but it's quite a colorful history. Though never officially legal, prostitution was tolerated and it flourished in Alaska for more than 50 years. And some very famous characters pop up, like Wyatt Earp and the "Birdman of Alcatraz". Definitely worth the time. |
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 "Good Time Girls? should be called Good Time Guys" | 2001-06-03 |
| - Reviewed By kethryvis |
| I cruised Alaska this summer and took a facinating tour of the Skagway Red Light district. After the tour, I wanted to learn more, thusly I hit a bookstore and found this book. I was thrilled to find it, as I recognized several of the names (Klondike Kate, PeaHull Annie, etc) and was looking forward to finding out more. The book promised not to leave out any "lusty and licentious parts". That couldn't be more wrong. I found out more information about the men of the Kondike and their wenching habits, than the actual women themselves. In this case, my wonderfully guided tour gave me more information about how the women actually conducted their business (lots of interesting info about their personal hygene that are no where to be found in this book. what kind of book on prostitution doesn't talk about birth control methods and their ways of preventing VD? VD is barely brought up). If I wanted to read about the men of the Klondike, I could pick up any random book in the Klondike History section of any bookstore. The women are often the ones forgotten about, and deserve better treatement in the annuls of history, most especially in a book supposedly about those women. If you want some good information on this type of history, go up to Alaska and take any one of the amazing Red Light District tours. Don't waste your money on this book. |
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| "Good read" | 2000-09-12 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| This it not the type of book I typically read. But while in Skagway on a second cruise to Alaska this summer, I skimmed this book in a bookstore but did not purchase it there. I continued to think about it, so I ordered it from Amazon.com. I am not studying anthropology nor am I an avid reader of books related to historical things, so this was a "one of a kind" read for me; and an interesting one at that. However, I agree with another reviewer that the book, while well researched, was not well organized. Except for a few chapters devoted to specific women, there was considerable lack of organization and I especially found chronology confusing. But, it in addition to stories about the women in the trade, it has enlightening segments about men everyone has heard of - Al Cody and Wyatt Earp - who spent some time in Alaska. I even learned about the "Birdman of Alcataz". Interesting comparisons are made of the various gold rush "camps", the extent to which the "good time girls" were accepted in these camps and what happened to some of these women later in life. Other than an occasional mention about the two common SIDs (sexually transmitted diseases) of that era, not much is mentioned about the other health-related issues the women faced other than tuberculosis, pneumonia or plagues. For example, I don't recall any mention of pregnancies and struggles with raising children while in the trade; perhaps there was no information available on these issues. |
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| "Good Time Girls brought to life" | 1999-12-30 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| Lael Morgan does a great job of piecing together old newspaper articles and photos to recreate the lives of these adventurous pioneers. The stories from Dawson are especially detailed (due to the resources) and give you the feeling that you know what it was like to live and work in Dawson during the gold rush. Knowing that the characters in the book were real make the stories that much more compelling. |
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| "Women and the Klondike" | |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| In the boomtowns of the Alaska-Yukon stampedes, where gold dust was common currency, the rarest commodity was an attractive woman, and her company could be costly. Author Lael Morgan takes you into the heart of the gold rush. Authentic, humorous and sympathetic. B/W photos. |
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