Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Epitaph for Ophir - A Novel about an Alaskan Mining Town

Epitaph for Ophir - A Novel about an Alaskan Mining Town

Cheek, George

Paperback

General World History

ISBN10: 1598245252
ISBN13: 9781598245257
Publisher: E Booktime Llc
Published: Jun 1 2007
Pages: 404
Weight: 1.12
Height: 0.83 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Gold drew stampeders to Alaska's Innoko river region in 1906, when the town of Ophir was founded. More than 40 years later, the unchanging, government-mandated price for gold was strangling the town and its mining operations. Two young men, trying to recapture a dying way of life, spend a cold but entertaining winter in a remote cabin with an old timer while, in the town, a boatload of liquor contributes to odd goings-on. A gunfight with no shots fired, a wrestling match where a woman defeats a man and the initiation of a 16-year-old boy into the brotherhood of the north help break the monotony. Community events take place in a roadhouse and two bars, where domestic disputes become public and where, on one night, a woman, squatting over a spittoon to avoid a 60-below outhouse, demanded to know if goggle-eyed spectators never saw a lady pee before? A Christmas party for the town's eight children is disrupted by a bungled knifing and, later, three of the children die in a fire when they are locked in while their parents visit a bar. The story is fiction, but Ophir and its troubles both were real. Ophir is gone, wiped out in a fire, but still appears on most maps. A few mines still operate.

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