Burning Daylight

Elam Harnish, known as Burning Daylight, is the most famous man of the Klondike gold rush, a tireless adventurer who races dogsleds across the frozen North and makes a fortune in gold. Taking his millions to San Francisco, he beats the financiers at their own game in ruthless speculation, until he falls in love with his secretary, Dede Mason, who refuses to marry a man so hardened by money, and he must choose between his fortune and a simple life in the hills of California.

Jack London published the novel in 1910, and it was one of his most popular books in his lifetime, joining the adventure of the North with a critique of capitalism. Read The Call of the Wild and Martin Eden.

Jack London (1876–1916) grew up poor in San Francisco and Oakland and lived a life as wild as his books: an oyster pirate at fifteen, a sailor on a sealing ship to Japan, a tramp, a socialist agitator and a gold seeker in the Klondike in 1897, where he caught scurvy and gathered material for a lifetime.

The Call of the Wild made him famous in 1903, and he became one of the best-paid writers of his day, producing White Fang, The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden among more than fifty books. He died on his California ranch at forty.