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.