What I know of the Klondike gold rush comes from reading The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London in my late teens. London’s life fascinated me, and I read most of his work. What I recall about his Klondike stories is the bitter cold and the elemental harshness of frontier life, where survival depended as much on luck and timing as it did on grit. For men who lusted after a big strike in the gold fields, the hardship was worth it — at least, until it wasn’t. Many prospectors never hit paydirt, while some that did squandered their sudden riches in the saloons and bordellos. While these elements are present in Ley Lines, Tim Welsh’s debut novel, he takes the Yukon story and adds several imaginative twists.
As the title implies, certain places in the world, such as Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Mount Shasta, and Crusoe Island, are thought by some to hold sacred energies, magnetic fields, or supernatural attributes. Sawdust City, the mining town where most of the novel unfolds, may be one of these places, at least in the view of Professor Zong, a purported man of science. “We all hold in our hearts beliefs that are irrational, that run counter to orthodoxy,” Zong says.
When a seven-foot-tall ear, white as chalk and floating on a round stone pedestal, follows a couple of miners back to Sawdust City from the top of a mountain, Zong is oddly dismissive, declaring the Ear an interesting curiosity but nothing to get worked up over. For the grizzled sourdoughs and patrons of the Dog Dick Inn, however, the Ear is seen as a gift, a big strike, the answer to their prayers. It doesn’t take long for the Ear to become a major attraction, drawing visitors and pilgrims from miles around, and pumping new life into the city. “It was as if the Klondike creeks, drained dry of gold, had deposited one last gift.”