Steam Laundry is a novel in poems based on the true story of Sarah
Ellen Gibson, a minerÆs wife during the Klondike and Alaska gold rushes.
Her journey began as she followed her husband to Dawson City, Yukon
Territory in 1898. She stayed there three years as the townÆs boom and
her marriage burned out. In 1903, she left her husband and sons to start
over in Fairbanks, Alaska, with another man. Based on archival research
and incorporating historical documents and photographs, the poems
approach the past through the ghosts of correspondence. The poems,
written in the voices of Gibson, her family members, and the people who
knew her, take on love, loss, failure, and desire. Some confront the
drama of failed marriages, troubled family relationships, and
alcoholism. Others spin the dramatic details of hunting accidents and
subarctic survival into compelling stories in verse. They embody the
opposing voices of an era during which men and women struggled in
different, but overlapping, universes. By staring at Gibson through the
spectral lenses of the people around her, the documents she left behind,
and the vision of a contemporary poet, the particulars of GibsonÆs life
are transformed into an exploration of the people history usually
forgets. Steam Laundry offers the reader the chance to try on the dusty,
mining-town overcoat of GibsonÆs life.
