Jessie

Jessie Mather grew up in a prosperous Victorian household in Sheffield, England, where she was raised to live a refined life. In 1913 her family's travels brought her to Eagle, Alaska, where she and her parents were left stranded when World War I broke out and the money needed to continue their journey ran out. Jessie died in Sitka in 1969, and the few belongings left from her estate were sold at a state auction. Betty Wyatt bought the lot of mementos without seeing them, then came to believe that the contents of one old trunk could reveal the story of this woman's life on the Alaskan frontier.

The book follows Jessie from her comfortable beginnings to a fall in fortune, set against the gold rush and sourdough years of Alaska. It traces how a genteel woman adapted to a rugged, unfamiliar land across more than five decades, and it is built around the objects and records that survived her.