The Rim of the Desert

Book excerpt: Tisdale was silent. Her glance came back to him. A sudden emotion stirred her face. Then all the conservatism dropped from her like a discarded cloak, and he felt her intrepid spirit respond to his own. Now she understood that moment in the basin; she knew it had been supreme; she was great enough to see there was nothing to forgive. "You were right," she said, and her voice broke in those steadying pauses that carried more expression than any words. "Fate was with us again. But I owe-my life-to you."-from "Chapter XI: The Loophole"Explorer, frontier trailblazer, and quiet hero Hollis Tisdale "had spent some of the hardest years of his Alaska career in the service of the Government," but he faces perhaps his greatest challenge in this classic and much beloved novel of the Pacific Northwest.First published in 1915, this is the hale and hearty tale of Tisdale's exploits in remotest Alaska, traveling across glaciers and cold deserts, braving avalanches and nefarious mining magnates, and facing political intrigue over the rights to Alaska's coal... not to mention all the ladies arch and brave who cross his path.Written in a spry voice and keeping a lively pace, this delightful novel is sure to please fans of pulp fiction.OF INTEREST TO: readers of early-20th-century fiction, armchair adventurersADA WOODRUFF ANDERSON (b. 1860) is also the author of the novels The Heart of the Red Firs (1908) and The Strain of White (1909).