The Floor of Heaven

Edgar award-winning historian Howard Blum’s The Floor of Heaven reads like a novel and has the scent of a best seller and future screenplay.

His book follows the intersecting trails, albeit not always true to history, of three real-life, colorful prospectors who stampeded to the Yukon Territory during our last great gold rush in 1890s Alaska. Only squawman George Carmack strikes it rich. Charlie Siringo, a Pinkerton detective, solves the baffling mystery of the Treadwell Mine’s bullion robbery. Soapy Smith becomes Alaska’s most notorious criminal; Soapy “crosses” the vigilantes one time too many and is shot dead as he tries to hijack Carmack’s gold.