1900s
1903
A01=Nicole Stellon O'Donnell
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Alaska
Author_Nicole Stellon O'Donnell
automatic-update
based on a true story
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FB
Category=FBA
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
documents
early 20th century
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
evocative
Fairbanks
family
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
gold rush
historical photographs
Language_English
marriage
mining town
narrative poems
novel in verse
PA=Contact supplier
Price_€10 to €20
prospecting
PS=Active
research
Sarah Ellen Gibson
social history
softlaunch
Yukon Territory
Product details
- ISBN 9781597092289
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 249g
- Dimensions: 177 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 16 Feb 2012
- Publisher: Red Hen Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Steam Laundry is a novel in poems based on the true story of Sarah Ellen Gibson, a minerÆs wife during the Klondike and Alaska gold rushes. Her journey began as she followed her husband to Dawson City, Yukon Territory in 1898. She stayed there three years as the townÆs boom and her marriage burned out. In 1903, she left her husband and sons to start over in Fairbanks, Alaska, with another man. Based on archival research and incorporating historical documents and photographs, the poems approach the past through the ghosts of correspondence.
The poems, written in the voices of Gibson, her family members, and the people who knew her, take on love, loss, failure, and desire. Some confront the drama of failed marriages, troubled family relationships, and alcoholism. Others spin the dramatic details of hunting accidents and subarctic survival into compelling stories in verse. They embody the opposing voices of an era during which men and women struggled in different, but overlapping, universes.
By staring at Gibson through the spectral lenses of the people around her, the documents she left behind, and the vision of a contemporary poet, the particulars of GibsonÆs life are transformed into an exploration of the people history usually forgets. Steam Laundry offers the reader the chance to try on the dusty, mining-town overcoat of GibsonÆs life.
