The Fugitive Wife: A Novel

A sweeping narrative set in gold-prospecting Alaska where ambition adventure and romance collideand the usual rules are forgottenThe year is Fleeing from a stormy marriage Essie a Midwestern farm girl joins up with prospectors bound for Nome where the golden sands teem with dreamers schemers and high rollers Feisty and resourceful Essie soon makes money caring for horses and delivering mail to the miners beach diggings Soon too Essie is drawn to Nate Deaton the idealistic foreman of the Cape Nome Company Nates Eastern background is in direct contrast to Essies down-to-earth Minnesota upbringing but there is a deeper problem Leonard Essies stubborn and volatile husband is sure to come after herShe had lived her life steered by the force of Leonard against him And when Leonard does travel north astonishing scenes of pursuit sacrifice and crucial decision rise to a conclusion that is both surprising and inevitablePowerfully evoking a past world and the variable territory of the heart this novel establishes Peter C Brown as a consummate storyteller.