Sixteen-year-old Lon Cope wants to be like his father, Jess, working among the mining engineers exploring and developing the huge Alaska Territory of the 1920’s. When Jess Cope, as superintendent, is blamed for the Board of Directors’ shutdown of a gold mine, the mine is branded “Cope’s Swindle.” Lon grows embittered at the injustice: fifteen years of his father’s good work forgotten, friends back-stabbing them in the desperate search for work, and job applications rejected at the sight of their last name, “Cope.” Hope returns when Jess is employed to explore mineral deposits along the Seward Peninsula. Father and son set out determined not only to survive the wilderness, but to restore the family name and to aid Alaska in becoming a settled region.

From the Bethlehem Books edition