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her pursuers—and who is also intent on reaching Nome as soon as possible. Glenister immediately begins to fall for the young beauty, who turns out to be Helen
Chester, niece of Judge Arthur Chester, recently appointed as the first federal judge for the Alaska Territory—the "law" is coming to the wild northern frontier. Except it turns out the law is crooked. The Judge and the federal marshall are really under the thumb of strongman politician Alexander McNamara. After reaching Nome, McNamara succeeds in being appointed receiver of all the most lucrative mining claims in the region, based on fraudulent disputes over the validity of the miners' claims. Glenister, Dextry, and a number of naive Swedes are dispossessed of their lands. The miners hire lawyers to fight on the legal side, and also form a vigilante group to fight the "law". McNamara rules ruthlessly, running the mines himself. Glenister sinks into despair, believing that Helen is in on the conspiracy against the miners, and almost loses his stake in the Midas in a night of reckless gambling. He is only saved from that fate by Cherry Malotte, whose unrequited love for Glenister has brought her to Nome. Helen slowly learns about the scheme being perpetrated by McNamara, her uncle, and others, while her affections are torn between Glenister and McNamara.
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Young fearless prospector Roy
Glenister and his older partner, Dextry are headed back to Nome on the first ship of the season, eager to return to protect their gold claim called the "Midas", which promises to yield them great wealth. On the trip, they defend a young woman who boards the ship from
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while Rex Beach was in Nome. Beach himself documented the non-fiction version in a series titled "The
Looting of Alaska", which was published in the January through May 1906 issues of
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BEACH'S "THE SPOILERS" READS LIKE A CHAPTER OUT OF LAWLESS YOUTH: Rude Story of a Rude Land Served Up
Without Timidity by One Who Has Seen and Who Has Done
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in San
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The Gold Fever: Rex E. Beach's
Thrilling Story of Life in the Far North, "The Spoilers"
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The book was quickly adapted into a play, and was later adapted to film five times, in
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Making the List: A Cultural
History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999
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The novel is loosely based on actual events that occurred during the
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http://npshistory.com/newsletters/the-american-west/v1n3.pdf
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4-Time Loser; 'The
Spoilers' Returns to Films Once More
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318:Peattie, Elia W. (April 21, 1906).
538:American novels adapted into films
248:The Six Most Popular Novels In May
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237:four times in its lists for 1906)
225:The annual American catalog, 1906
337:Recent Fiction and Its Critics
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360:Frontier Politics: Alaska's
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456:Rex Beach
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358:(1979).
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76:313 pp
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
