Smoke Bellew

Smoke Bellew is the kind of sweeping adventure saga that made Jack London one of the most popular novelists in the world in the early years of the 20th century. On a lark, the novel's hero, Christopher Bellew, a San Francisco newspaperman and dandy, sets off on what he believes will be a brief trek into the Klondike to cover the latest gold rush.

The lark turns into a rough, raw adventure that transforms the young chekako (tenderfoot) into a tough, hardened survivor. As ever, Jack London brings to vivid life the cold, bleak, unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and the colorful, desperately uncertain lives of both natives and outsiders.

Smoke Bellew's galvanizing encounters with life, love and death emerge in a superbly paced narrative typical of London's masterful storytelling style. Readers of White Fang and The Call of the Wild will find this lesser known but highly compelling adventure novel impossible to put down.