Footprints Across America. Retracing an Irishman's Journey During the Last Great Gold Rush

Inspired by the adventures of a hardy nineteenth-century Irish emigrant to America, Micí Mac Gabhann, who detailed his exploits in the Irish language book Rotha Mór an tSaoil, Michael McMonagle undertakes an epic journey to retrace his steps. Following his journey from New York to the Klondike Gold Rush, he traverses the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains of Montana, and the vast Alaskan wilderness. As he compares the America that Micí encountered in the late nineteenth century with that of the twenty-first century, the author provides a unique perspective on a very different America. Footprints Across America weaves the two journeys together and highlights the strong links between both eras. We are brought to historic places like Butte and Dawson City, mining ghost towns, Native American reservations, ranch houses and isolated Alaskan villages. We are dragged up mountains and down rivers. In these out-of-the-way places, the voices of cowboys, shamans, exotic dancers, soldiers,...