RIVERS OF GOLD

By the author of Turn of the Dice (1990), a more appealing period adventure. Again, it's Woman-Against-the-Odds--here amid killer winds and weather and dirty deeds in gold rush days on the Alaskan/Canadian frontier. English housemaid Amity Jones, 19, not taken with the prospect of marriage to an aging butcher, arranges to participate in a proxy marriage across the seas to 43-year-old Samuel York, who owns, he says, many acres up Yukon way. He does indeed--but the acres are reached from a far northern outpost by a trek (in the thaw) that includes a river-run and a hands-and-knees creep up a mountainside. Outside a snug if crude cabin, Amity meets her husband, who turns out to be a hard worker and decent but uncommunicative. Their one serious row, after a few years, is about the gold Sam found on his river--Sam won't use it to educate their son because he wants to preserve the land he loves from gold-happy hordes. Off and on, meanwhile, Amity has had the companionship and help of roving prospector Jake, who rescues her from a frozen death (and will always seem to show up in the nick). Then one day, in the wilderness, there will be murder and rape, and a dazed Amity will learn of another--and legal--Mrs. Sam York. There will also be another birth, bleak treks, an unlikely partnership in business, rescues--and, finally, revenge on three killers--before Amity commits herself to true love of a man and a land. Frosty period Yukon ambiance--plus a streak of gold-panning detail--in an athletic frontier entertainment that's got more ""Mush!"" than mush of the lovin' kind.