The Fugitive Wife By Peter C. Brown
The year is 1900, in gold-prospecting Alaska. Essie, a Midwestern farm girl fleeing from a stormy marriage, joins up with prospectors bound for Nome, where the golden sands teem with dreamers, schemers and high-rollers. You will not forget the lives met here, those thrown-together fortune-seekers who left behind marriage, betrothal, family and ultimately so much else in one of the great American quests.