September 21, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode we chat to crime writer Beth Lewis about her latest novel The Rush, discuss intrepid women in the wilderness, and the madness of the Yukon Gold Rush
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to Stella thriller writer Beth Lewis, so
good that we're going to do two introductions for her.
That was mine.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Wait, wait, no, you can't do that. You didn't give
me a chance to pull it up. Wait wait, it's
going to take a few minutes. Talk to Beth for
a little while.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
My nuts learned colleague is clearly struggling with simple instructions
as to in terms of getting his introut.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm whipping it out as we speak.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hello, this is the most professional podcast I've ever been
on it.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Gentlemen, Lindzien and gentlemen, this is my introduction, right, you've
heard Vassims, which was basically Beth Lewis right, So here's mine.
You ready. Beth Lewis was raised in the wilds of
Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach.
She's traveled extensively and has had close encounters with black bears,
(00:57):
killer whales and great white sharks. She has in the
past been a bank cashier, fire performer, and a juggler,
though possibly not all at the same time. Her debut novel,
The Wolf Road was shortlisted for the inaugural Glass Bell Award,
and her third novel, The Origins of Iris, was shortlisted
(01:17):
for the Polari Prize. And I have to say her
latest novel, The Rush, set in gold Rush era Klondike,
is a tour de force. The wonderful Beth Lewis welcome
you tell us which was better.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I'm just going to say that that was indeed an
impressive introduction. It would have been more impressive.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
You hadn't just copy and pasted that from her website.
You've applied no ingenuity whatsoever to it. Beth, Enough of
this waffle. Let's start at the beginning. Where did you
grow up?
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Now? I grew up in Como, which was great fun.
I did pretty much spend my summers on the beach
and night surfing a lot, and being a bit of
a reprobate than yes, doing all kinds of.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Things, nightsurfing. Night surfing is that is that surfing at
night or surfing dressed as at night?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I would love that, but you kind of would sink
in your armor. Not the safest. I wear contact lenses,
so it's surfing. You can't wear glasses or contact lenses
in the sea, so I couldn't see anything and it
was dark. So I'm amazed I survived my teenagers, to
be honest.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Now I have prescription sea goggles.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Of course you do, like like Hu Grant.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yes, people are really.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
People often mistake me for Hugh Grant, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Especially in public toilets.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
What do you do when you go swim? Me?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I keep my contact lenses in most of the time
because I'm I don't care about.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Thank you for that completely unsolicited response. I was talking
to my colleague.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
There under me. Now you place, Beth, do you really
have prescriptions of goggles?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Everybody does, everybody who cares about being able to see
when they go swimming.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
When was the last time you went swimming?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Just I was in the sea just a couple of
weeks ago. I have special swim hat as well.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yes, the special swim hat. Why is it like a borer?
Is the affairs? It was your special swim hat look like?
Is it a big cat with D on it? Is
it conical with a big letter D?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It's like the thing the pros use the speed of Anyway,
Enough of this, but in that copied introduction it was
hinted that you've had many rather intriguing careers before before
turning your hand to writing. So the one that intrigued
me the most was fire performer. Now what exactly does
that mean?
Speaker 3 (03:53):
That means that I had a misspent youth. Massive, and
I spent a lot of time at festivals with paraffin
and wix on chains, spinning them around my head, lighting
on the fire. I learned to fire eat and fire breathe,
which was very dangerous. And yeah, I did loads of
(04:18):
festivals over a couple of summers. I had my I
had multicolored braids in my hair, like down to my
waist as well. It was a prop proper little hippie.
But I've grown up.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I like, we've got to get behind the curtain here.
How does one fire eat properly?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Can I just say before that if you get behind
the curtain with the fier eater, then the curtain's going
to get on fire.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
So maybe not if they're good at their job.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, true, Yeah, so explain then.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
So, God, it's been a while.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
You get a special small fire torch, which is you know,
it's quite small because so it can fit in your mouth.
Obviously relate. There are many innuendos that can come out
of this conversation, and I'm just waiting for a bit
to just latch onto one.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And why you carry on about your little always?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
So? Yeah, get small torch, you light it on fire,
you put it upside down to the flagers upwards, and
as you put it into your mouth, you exhale, so
there's no air, there's no oxygen in your mouth, and
that puts out the fire as your close mouth. So
it's all a trick. You don't actually put the fire
in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You just you're learning to do this and you don't
know how to do it properly. Surely there are times
when you make a mistake and burn your mouth.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I have burnt my I burned my lips a couple
of times. But you learn very quickly because otherwise you
burn yourself.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, that's I think you should try it. The problem
there is best that Vasa's wig is flammable.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
You can wear a swim cat.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I've got Hugh Grant here, thank you very much. What
I don't understand, Bet, what I don't understand is why
you have never done this at a literary festival.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Too many books, too many flammer things.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Let's get to writing. Let's sell some books. Let's about
your Let's start with your debut, The wolf Roge, super
critically claimed. Tell us give us the elevator pitch for
this book, and tell us why you wrote that particular story.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
The wolf Rode is a story. It's a post apocalyptic
survival story about a teenage girl who discovers her adoptive
father as a serial killer, and she runs away into
the wilderness to try and find her real parents, but
he and the magistrate looking for him are very close behind.
(06:38):
So it's a bit of a cat and mouse thriller.
And it's all told in first person dialect, so it's
very immersive where.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Is and it was huge in America. And can I
just say that it was published the same year that
both you and I Vass were first published. Look how
young she is? To look how young she is?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, you were eighty two when you were published, anyway,
so we wouldn't expect you to look very all right,
let's talk about where your journey has led you from
the wolf Road. So you've had several books in the interim,
but this year you published or the Rush was published,
which has got great press attention, great critical acclaim. A
(07:24):
BBC Radio two book club pick tell us about the rush.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
So the Rush is a kind of return to that
wilderness setting. It's set in the Yukon gold Rush of
eighteen ninety eight, and it focuses on three women who
were there at the time. The miner's wife who was
waiting for her husband to strike it rich, a hotel
(07:50):
brothel owner who needs to keep the wolves from the door.
And a young journalist who is making the very dangerous
trip up to the goldfields to find her that another
girl is. A woman is murdered in the town and
these three lives collide while they try and find her killer.
(08:12):
And it's all very gritty, kind of focused on a
bit of the atmosphere of the time and a lot
of All of the characters and most of the main
events are based on real historical events and real historical people.
Even the dog is based on a real historical dog.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Let's talk about those real historical events, because you just
set the scene for us, because this is the gold Rush, right,
give us a little bit of scene setting about the
actual gold rush for people who don't who don't know
exactly what it was.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So there were two major gold rushes in the US
in the eighteen hundreds, So one was in eighteen forty
nine in California. That was the big one that most
people have heard of. But in eighteen ninety seven there
was the second one, which was in the Yukon, which
is in Canada. A lot of people call it the
Alaskan gold Rush because the trail started in Alaska, but
(09:08):
it's actually in Canada, and the Canadians like it if
you say that. And they about one hundred thousand people
tried to get up to the gold fields. They were
called stampeders. And it all started when there was an
article written in the San Francisco I can't remember the
(09:31):
name of the paper, but a paper in San Francisco,
and it was I remember vividly that it was published
on July seventeenth of eighteen ninety seven, and I remember
that because July seventeenth is my birthday. So I was
stuck in my hand and it just said gold, gold gold. Yeah,
so I got that link, special little link there, but
it just said gold, gold, gold. And then people were
(09:53):
coming off the boats in San Francisco were literally tons
of gold and millions of dollars worth of gold in
their in their hand luggage, and they were suddenly rich.
So one hundred thousand people were like, I want a
piece of that, and they went up to the gold fields.
And the trail for most people to the gold fields
(10:15):
was a six hundred kilometer trek through every type of
wilderness you could imagine. So people would arrive on the
boats in a place called Skagway or another town nearby,
and then they would walk or use horses and they
would go a couple of hundred kilometers across mountains through
really treacherous trails, and then they would have to get
(10:41):
a boat and go through the lakes and go through
the up the Yukon River through rapids that would just
upend your boat, and that's it.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
All your supplies were gone.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
People had to carry a year's worth of supplies sort
of food and water, everything and all their mine equipment
to be able to be allowed into Canada to go
to the mind. So it was a huge undertaking, and
about of those one hundred thousand people, about four thousand
(11:12):
struck gold and made it out.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I have a couple of things to see. Firstly, as
you know, I've read this book, and I didn't want
to read this book because I don't like cold books.
But I absolutely adored it, and it's an amazing book.
It really is. From the first page, you know you're
in the hands of an accomplished writer. The three Well,
(11:37):
let's talk about the three female female perspectives, because we
think of the gold Rush as a very masculine thing.
We don't often ever hear the female side. What got
you interested in that? And how did you research it?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
And that was mostly the point was that I'd been
aware of the gold russiance I was quite young. I
watched a lot of movies about it. I watched TV shows,
you know, a White Fang, Red Jack, London, Call of
the Wild, those kind of things. So I've always been
aware of it, but I've always been aware of the
male stories, and.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Women were always the men and the dogs are always
talked about.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
But exactly so, women are always a footnote. And when
I was when I started researching this, I found that,
you know, going onto a website about the gold Rush,
you'd have all of these sort of section heads of
you know, mining, town life, the postal service, the women,
(12:35):
something else. You know, the women were such a footnote
in the whole story of the gold Rush, and I
really wanted to dive into that and explore, because I
think that is one of the problems of women in.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
History is that we've often been a footnote.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And I think that these women actually, when I got
into the into the research of them, they were incredible.
They were so strong and so much stronger than a
lot of the men, and so canny a lot of them.
The woman that I based one of the women that
I based Martha the hotel owner on, was called Her
(13:14):
name was Belinda Mulready, and she became known as the
richest woman in the Klondike. And she was this savvy
woman who realized that the miners would want the finer
things in life as comfort while they were up, you know,
digging and being in mud and cold for months at
a time. And she was absolutely right, and she raked
(13:36):
it in, you know, and she took payment in gold,
and then at the end of the night every night
she would sweep the floor in her bar, and she
would run those sweepings through a sluice box to catch
the gold and she would take another hundred dollars worth
of gold just from dust that had fallen on the floor.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Keep your floor right now, yeah, I have, We're going
to save it we're going to see it, and we're
going to see if we go around twenty or something
of that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Fine, I will. I have a feeling we might end
up with gummy bears rather than anything else.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
But you give it a shot, now, Beth, you love
writing about women in these wild places. Do you do
you personally go out into the wild Are you personally
inspired by going out there?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah? I mean I love going out into the wilderness.
It's my happy place. I spent a lot of time
when I was younger, before children and proper jobs, and
you know, I went to Canada on my own when
I was nineteen twenty and traveled across from Toronto to Vancouver.
I went away watching camping in the in the Johnston
(14:37):
Straight and you know, kayaks with killer whales and black
beards and stuff like that, and hiked around all there,
and I spent a lot of time being in wild places.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Now picturing Reese Witherspoon in wild Yeah, do you have
a recour book? I mean the book. The book is
absolutely brilliant, and the film is really really good as well.
I can't remember the name of the trail, the Pacific
something something trailed, absolutely fabulous. You have you ever had
a hairy experience to come across a bear take a
bear ron.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, we did have quite a close encounter with a bear.
We were in Canada and we were staying in a
tent like miles away from anywhere with a group were stupid,
but in the middle of the night we heard a
bear behind our tents. We heard these kind of snuffling,
growling noises behind our tent and it was getting quite
(15:34):
close to the point where we could see a bit
of a shadow of a bear. And this I think
this was it might have been a grizzly bear rather
than a black bear, which are the scary ones.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So it was all that snuffling growling that was that
was abbit looking for.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
What's the difference? What's the difference between these two bears?
And wise, which one is right brown and which one's
more dangerous?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
The brown bears are more dangerous, they are much much bigger,
and they're the grizzly bears, so they're the ones that
are more aggressive the brown the black bears are more
scared of people.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I apologize for my colleagues ignorance have Did you never
see Leonardo DiCaprio in the revenue, Great Big brand. Yeah, yeah,
what are you? What are you? What are you working
on at the moment? What are you working on next?
Because because I know that I know the answer, and
I know that you're sort of continuing.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
So I've finished the next novel now and it's with
my editor, and that is in the same vein as
The Rush. It's a full on classic Western, but it's
my take, a feminist take on a Western. So it's
you know, sheriffs and outlaws and homesteaders and gun totings things,
(17:00):
and there's even a trained robbery, you know, proper proper
Western stuff. But it's again all about the women. So
the main characters are all women, and they're all based
on women that I could find at the time as well,
and I've found.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Tell us about some of them about then tell us
about Yeah, tell us about some of these women that
you've come across.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
So there's been a couple that are very interesting. So
there's there's a bit of a tradition, I suppose of
female outlaws, but they've usually been female outlaws in relation
to men, So like Butcher Cassidy's girlfriend or you know,
Jesse James is.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
You know, piece on the side.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So I kind of wanted to center one of those
in the book, and found a couple of really interesting
women that one called Pearl Hart, who was a very
nasty piece of work in her own right and ran
with a lot of.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
The gangs and stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
So I have a I have an outlaw lady who
ran with a very dangerous gang, and then I have
I found a precedent, which was you both write his
historical stuff, so you'll know that when when you find
a piece of research that supports a really cool plot point.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
It's like the best thing.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And yes, it's I found this thing where way back
it doesn't happen anymore. But in America, sheriffs were elected,
and so if a sheriff died during their term, their
wife could could follow out the term, could could keep being,
(18:33):
could become sheriff and and work out the rest of
their husband's term as sheriff. And it only once that
I could find, but that was enough for it to
be plausible for a book. So I have a lady
sheriff and a lady outlaw and a homesteader as well, and.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I like that. So here's here's the question for you.
Out of all of the real female characters that you've
come across in your four and you really searched for
your four books. Who would you most like to meet?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Probably Emma Kelly, who is the basis of Kate Kelly,
who's my journalist, young plucky journalist in the Rush. She
is the one who had the dog, and she got
a dog because it was safe for her.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
But she was really interesting.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
She was a young, like early twenties woman, and she
by herself went up to the klon Knighte and she
paid people to help her out. And at one point,
my favorite story that I found about her was that
she when they got to the rapids, the really dangerous
(19:44):
they had to you had to pay a pilot to
take you through the rapids. But women weren't allowed to go.
They were barred from being in the boats and they
had to get out and they had to walk around
over the headland and meet the boats on the other side.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Why was that was considered too dangerous for the women.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Or pure No, it was, yeah, it was. It was
deemed too dangerous and that women weren't capable of being
in the boats. So when this happened to Emma Kelly,
she basically said, screw that, I'm going to do it.
Any any experience that a man can have, I can have.
(20:25):
And so she she paid extra to this pilot to
carry take her through with this group of men, and
she absolutely loved it. She just was just screaming happiness.
It was like a rollercoaster to her, and she loved
it so much that she got out on the other side,
walked back.
Speaker 5 (20:44):
Over the headland and did it again. And it's just
that if she.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Was like any anything a man can, I can do twice,
and she was the first woman in those rapids.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I'd like to chuck, I'd like to check abber over
the rapids in a barrel.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I would swim mate, Okay, I would swim, I would survive,
wouldn't I birth? Fine?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Well, if I see barrel and it was made out
of lead, well.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Why would I get into that? Constantly belittling my abilities
as a whitewater rapids survivor. You said you had a question, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Last question before we wind up? Where can waken people?
So the rash is out now, people can buy that,
and it's been endorsed by.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It's coming out in America right, it's still to come
out in America, and some of our listeners are over there.
When's out in the states.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I think October seventh is out in the states.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Where can where can people see you? Are you going
to be doing some events?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Well, just just did my last one of the year
at Bloody Scotland.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
With how did it go? Was it good? Was the
interview of brother.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
The moderator was awful and ask the worst questions and
just copy and pasted my bio was the intro, but
it was it was the other the other people on
the panel great.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
And that is That's precisely why that moderator deserves to.
Speaker 6 (22:15):
Go over the rapids in a lead behind a barrel.
I rest my case, ladies and gentlemen. I'll have you
know I'm hurt. I'm very hurt at this point.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Beth. On that note, thank you so much. You've been wonderful.
I mean you might have told a few lies towards
the end, but we forgive you for those.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Was my favorite panel.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It was, Yes, there you were. That's the kind of
lie we like.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
There we go.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Shall I do the outro vast? Shall I do that? Please? Do? Okay?
M ladies and gentlemen. That brings us to the close
of another episode. Once again, If you've l like the show.
Can we ask you to leave a re you sign
up for regular episodes using your favorite podcast app, and
please do spread the word. So, mister Kahn, do you
(23:10):
think we could survive out in the wild?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
What if we have to live off our weeds?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And on that rather sad note, we've been your friends.
The Red Hot Chili writers on Murder Junction, See you
next time.
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to Stella thriller writer Beth Lewis, so
good that we're going to do two introductions for her.
That was mine.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Wait, wait, no, you can't do that. You didn't give
me a chance to pull it up. Wait wait, it's
going to take a few minutes. Talk to Beth for
a little while.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
My nuts learned colleague is clearly struggling with simple instructions
as to in terms of getting his introut.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm whipping it out as we speak.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hello, this is the most professional podcast I've ever been
on it.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Gentlemen, Lindzien and gentlemen, this is my introduction, right, you've
heard Vassims, which was basically Beth Lewis right, So here's mine.
You ready. Beth Lewis was raised in the wilds of
Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach.
She's traveled extensively and has had close encounters with black bears,
(00:57):
killer whales and great white sharks. She has in the
past been a bank cashier, fire performer, and a juggler,
though possibly not all at the same time. Her debut novel,
The Wolf Road was shortlisted for the inaugural Glass Bell Award,
and her third novel, The Origins of Iris, was shortlisted
(01:17):
for the Polari Prize. And I have to say her
latest novel, The Rush, set in gold Rush era Klondike,
is a tour de force. The wonderful Beth Lewis welcome
you tell us which was better.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I'm just going to say that that was indeed an
impressive introduction. It would have been more impressive.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
You hadn't just copy and pasted that from her website.
You've applied no ingenuity whatsoever to it. Beth, Enough of
this waffle. Let's start at the beginning. Where did you
grow up?
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Now? I grew up in Como, which was great fun.
I did pretty much spend my summers on the beach
and night surfing a lot, and being a bit of
a reprobate than yes, doing all kinds of.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Things, nightsurfing. Night surfing is that is that surfing at
night or surfing dressed as at night?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I would love that, but you kind of would sink
in your armor. Not the safest. I wear contact lenses,
so it's surfing. You can't wear glasses or contact lenses
in the sea, so I couldn't see anything and it
was dark. So I'm amazed I survived my teenagers, to
be honest.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Now I have prescription sea goggles.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Of course you do, like like Hu Grant.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yes, people are really.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
People often mistake me for Hugh Grant, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Especially in public toilets.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
What do you do when you go swim? Me?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I keep my contact lenses in most of the time
because I'm I don't care about.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Thank you for that completely unsolicited response. I was talking
to my colleague.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
There under me. Now you place, Beth, do you really
have prescriptions of goggles?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Everybody does, everybody who cares about being able to see
when they go swimming.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
When was the last time you went swimming?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Just I was in the sea just a couple of
weeks ago. I have special swim hat as well.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yes, the special swim hat. Why is it like a borer?
Is the affairs? It was your special swim hat look like?
Is it a big cat with D on it? Is
it conical with a big letter D?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It's like the thing the pros use the speed of Anyway,
Enough of this, but in that copied introduction it was
hinted that you've had many rather intriguing careers before before
turning your hand to writing. So the one that intrigued
me the most was fire performer. Now what exactly does
that mean?
Speaker 3 (03:53):
That means that I had a misspent youth. Massive, and
I spent a lot of time at festivals with paraffin
and wix on chains, spinning them around my head, lighting
on the fire. I learned to fire eat and fire breathe,
which was very dangerous. And yeah, I did loads of
(04:18):
festivals over a couple of summers. I had my I
had multicolored braids in my hair, like down to my
waist as well. It was a prop proper little hippie.
But I've grown up.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I like, we've got to get behind the curtain here.
How does one fire eat properly?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Can I just say before that if you get behind
the curtain with the fier eater, then the curtain's going
to get on fire.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
So maybe not if they're good at their job.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, true, Yeah, so explain then.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
So, God, it's been a while.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
You get a special small fire torch, which is you know,
it's quite small because so it can fit in your mouth.
Obviously relate. There are many innuendos that can come out
of this conversation, and I'm just waiting for a bit
to just latch onto one.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And why you carry on about your little always?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
So? Yeah, get small torch, you light it on fire,
you put it upside down to the flagers upwards, and
as you put it into your mouth, you exhale, so
there's no air, there's no oxygen in your mouth, and
that puts out the fire as your close mouth. So
it's all a trick. You don't actually put the fire
in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You just you're learning to do this and you don't
know how to do it properly. Surely there are times
when you make a mistake and burn your mouth.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I have burnt my I burned my lips a couple
of times. But you learn very quickly because otherwise you
burn yourself.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, that's I think you should try it. The problem
there is best that Vasa's wig is flammable.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
You can wear a swim cat.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I've got Hugh Grant here, thank you very much. What
I don't understand, Bet, what I don't understand is why
you have never done this at a literary festival.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Too many books, too many flammer things.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Let's get to writing. Let's sell some books. Let's about
your Let's start with your debut, The wolf Roge, super
critically claimed. Tell us give us the elevator pitch for
this book, and tell us why you wrote that particular story.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
The wolf Rode is a story. It's a post apocalyptic
survival story about a teenage girl who discovers her adoptive
father as a serial killer, and she runs away into
the wilderness to try and find her real parents, but
he and the magistrate looking for him are very close behind.
(06:38):
So it's a bit of a cat and mouse thriller.
And it's all told in first person dialect, so it's
very immersive where.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Is and it was huge in America. And can I
just say that it was published the same year that
both you and I Vass were first published. Look how
young she is? To look how young she is?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, you were eighty two when you were published, anyway,
so we wouldn't expect you to look very all right,
let's talk about where your journey has led you from
the wolf Road. So you've had several books in the interim,
but this year you published or the Rush was published,
which has got great press attention, great critical acclaim. A
(07:24):
BBC Radio two book club pick tell us about the rush.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
So the Rush is a kind of return to that
wilderness setting. It's set in the Yukon gold Rush of
eighteen ninety eight, and it focuses on three women who
were there at the time. The miner's wife who was
waiting for her husband to strike it rich, a hotel
(07:50):
brothel owner who needs to keep the wolves from the door.
And a young journalist who is making the very dangerous
trip up to the goldfields to find her that another
girl is. A woman is murdered in the town and
these three lives collide while they try and find her killer.
(08:12):
And it's all very gritty, kind of focused on a
bit of the atmosphere of the time and a lot
of All of the characters and most of the main
events are based on real historical events and real historical people.
Even the dog is based on a real historical dog.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Let's talk about those real historical events, because you just
set the scene for us, because this is the gold Rush, right,
give us a little bit of scene setting about the
actual gold rush for people who don't who don't know
exactly what it was.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So there were two major gold rushes in the US
in the eighteen hundreds, So one was in eighteen forty
nine in California. That was the big one that most
people have heard of. But in eighteen ninety seven there
was the second one, which was in the Yukon, which
is in Canada. A lot of people call it the
Alaskan gold Rush because the trail started in Alaska, but
(09:08):
it's actually in Canada, and the Canadians like it if
you say that. And they about one hundred thousand people
tried to get up to the gold fields. They were
called stampeders. And it all started when there was an
article written in the San Francisco I can't remember the
(09:31):
name of the paper, but a paper in San Francisco,
and it was I remember vividly that it was published
on July seventeenth of eighteen ninety seven, and I remember
that because July seventeenth is my birthday. So I was
stuck in my hand and it just said gold, gold gold. Yeah,
so I got that link, special little link there, but
it just said gold, gold, gold. And then people were
(09:53):
coming off the boats in San Francisco were literally tons
of gold and millions of dollars worth of gold in
their in their hand luggage, and they were suddenly rich.
So one hundred thousand people were like, I want a
piece of that, and they went up to the gold fields.
And the trail for most people to the gold fields
(10:15):
was a six hundred kilometer trek through every type of
wilderness you could imagine. So people would arrive on the
boats in a place called Skagway or another town nearby,
and then they would walk or use horses and they
would go a couple of hundred kilometers across mountains through
really treacherous trails, and then they would have to get
(10:41):
a boat and go through the lakes and go through
the up the Yukon River through rapids that would just
upend your boat, and that's it.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
All your supplies were gone.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
People had to carry a year's worth of supplies sort
of food and water, everything and all their mine equipment
to be able to be allowed into Canada to go
to the mind. So it was a huge undertaking, and
about of those one hundred thousand people, about four thousand
(11:12):
struck gold and made it out.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I have a couple of things to see. Firstly, as
you know, I've read this book, and I didn't want
to read this book because I don't like cold books.
But I absolutely adored it, and it's an amazing book.
It really is. From the first page, you know you're
in the hands of an accomplished writer. The three Well,
(11:37):
let's talk about the three female female perspectives, because we
think of the gold Rush as a very masculine thing.
We don't often ever hear the female side. What got
you interested in that? And how did you research it?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
And that was mostly the point was that I'd been
aware of the gold russiance I was quite young. I
watched a lot of movies about it. I watched TV shows,
you know, a White Fang, Red Jack, London, Call of
the Wild, those kind of things. So I've always been
aware of it, but I've always been aware of the
male stories, and.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Women were always the men and the dogs are always
talked about.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
But exactly so, women are always a footnote. And when
I was when I started researching this, I found that,
you know, going onto a website about the gold Rush,
you'd have all of these sort of section heads of
you know, mining, town life, the postal service, the women,
(12:35):
something else. You know, the women were such a footnote
in the whole story of the gold Rush, and I
really wanted to dive into that and explore, because I
think that is one of the problems of women in.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
History is that we've often been a footnote.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And I think that these women actually, when I got
into the into the research of them, they were incredible.
They were so strong and so much stronger than a
lot of the men, and so canny a lot of them.
The woman that I based one of the women that
I based Martha the hotel owner on, was called Her
(13:14):
name was Belinda Mulready, and she became known as the
richest woman in the Klondike. And she was this savvy
woman who realized that the miners would want the finer
things in life as comfort while they were up, you know,
digging and being in mud and cold for months at
a time. And she was absolutely right, and she raked
(13:36):
it in, you know, and she took payment in gold,
and then at the end of the night every night
she would sweep the floor in her bar, and she
would run those sweepings through a sluice box to catch
the gold and she would take another hundred dollars worth
of gold just from dust that had fallen on the floor.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Keep your floor right now, yeah, I have, We're going
to save it we're going to see it, and we're
going to see if we go around twenty or something
of that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Fine, I will. I have a feeling we might end
up with gummy bears rather than anything else.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
But you give it a shot, now, Beth, you love
writing about women in these wild places. Do you do
you personally go out into the wild Are you personally
inspired by going out there?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah? I mean I love going out into the wilderness.
It's my happy place. I spent a lot of time
when I was younger, before children and proper jobs, and
you know, I went to Canada on my own when
I was nineteen twenty and traveled across from Toronto to Vancouver.
I went away watching camping in the in the Johnston
(14:37):
Straight and you know, kayaks with killer whales and black
beards and stuff like that, and hiked around all there,
and I spent a lot of time being in wild places.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Now picturing Reese Witherspoon in wild Yeah, do you have
a recour book? I mean the book. The book is
absolutely brilliant, and the film is really really good as well.
I can't remember the name of the trail, the Pacific
something something trailed, absolutely fabulous. You have you ever had
a hairy experience to come across a bear take a
bear ron.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, we did have quite a close encounter with a bear.
We were in Canada and we were staying in a
tent like miles away from anywhere with a group were stupid,
but in the middle of the night we heard a
bear behind our tents. We heard these kind of snuffling,
growling noises behind our tent and it was getting quite
(15:34):
close to the point where we could see a bit
of a shadow of a bear. And this I think
this was it might have been a grizzly bear rather
than a black bear, which are the scary ones.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So it was all that snuffling growling that was that
was abbit looking for.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
What's the difference? What's the difference between these two bears?
And wise, which one is right brown and which one's
more dangerous?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
The brown bears are more dangerous, they are much much bigger,
and they're the grizzly bears, so they're the ones that
are more aggressive the brown the black bears are more
scared of people.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I apologize for my colleagues ignorance have Did you never
see Leonardo DiCaprio in the revenue, Great Big brand. Yeah, yeah,
what are you? What are you? What are you working
on at the moment? What are you working on next?
Because because I know that I know the answer, and
I know that you're sort of continuing.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
So I've finished the next novel now and it's with
my editor, and that is in the same vein as
The Rush. It's a full on classic Western, but it's
my take, a feminist take on a Western. So it's
you know, sheriffs and outlaws and homesteaders and gun totings things,
(17:00):
and there's even a trained robbery, you know, proper proper
Western stuff. But it's again all about the women. So
the main characters are all women, and they're all based
on women that I could find at the time as well,
and I've found.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Tell us about some of them about then tell us
about Yeah, tell us about some of these women that
you've come across.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
So there's been a couple that are very interesting. So
there's there's a bit of a tradition, I suppose of
female outlaws, but they've usually been female outlaws in relation
to men, So like Butcher Cassidy's girlfriend or you know,
Jesse James is.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
You know, piece on the side.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So I kind of wanted to center one of those
in the book, and found a couple of really interesting
women that one called Pearl Hart, who was a very
nasty piece of work in her own right and ran
with a lot of.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
The gangs and stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
So I have a I have an outlaw lady who
ran with a very dangerous gang, and then I have
I found a precedent, which was you both write his
historical stuff, so you'll know that when when you find
a piece of research that supports a really cool plot point.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
It's like the best thing.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And yes, it's I found this thing where way back
it doesn't happen anymore. But in America, sheriffs were elected,
and so if a sheriff died during their term, their
wife could could follow out the term, could could keep being,
(18:33):
could become sheriff and and work out the rest of
their husband's term as sheriff. And it only once that
I could find, but that was enough for it to
be plausible for a book. So I have a lady
sheriff and a lady outlaw and a homesteader as well, and.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I like that. So here's here's the question for you.
Out of all of the real female characters that you've
come across in your four and you really searched for
your four books. Who would you most like to meet?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Probably Emma Kelly, who is the basis of Kate Kelly,
who's my journalist, young plucky journalist in the Rush. She
is the one who had the dog, and she got
a dog because it was safe for her.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
But she was really interesting.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
She was a young, like early twenties woman, and she
by herself went up to the klon Knighte and she
paid people to help her out. And at one point,
my favorite story that I found about her was that
she when they got to the rapids, the really dangerous
(19:44):
they had to you had to pay a pilot to
take you through the rapids. But women weren't allowed to go.
They were barred from being in the boats and they
had to get out and they had to walk around
over the headland and meet the boats on the other side.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Why was that was considered too dangerous for the women.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Or pure No, it was, yeah, it was. It was
deemed too dangerous and that women weren't capable of being
in the boats. So when this happened to Emma Kelly,
she basically said, screw that, I'm going to do it.
Any any experience that a man can have, I can have.
(20:25):
And so she she paid extra to this pilot to
carry take her through with this group of men, and
she absolutely loved it. She just was just screaming happiness.
It was like a rollercoaster to her, and she loved
it so much that she got out on the other side,
walked back.
Speaker 5 (20:44):
Over the headland and did it again. And it's just
that if she.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Was like any anything a man can, I can do twice,
and she was the first woman in those rapids.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I'd like to chuck, I'd like to check abber over
the rapids in a barrel.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I would swim mate, Okay, I would swim, I would survive,
wouldn't I birth? Fine?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Well, if I see barrel and it was made out
of lead, well.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Why would I get into that? Constantly belittling my abilities
as a whitewater rapids survivor. You said you had a question, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Last question before we wind up? Where can waken people?
So the rash is out now, people can buy that,
and it's been endorsed by.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It's coming out in America right, it's still to come
out in America, and some of our listeners are over there.
When's out in the states.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I think October seventh is out in the states.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Where can where can people see you? Are you going
to be doing some events?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Well, just just did my last one of the year
at Bloody Scotland.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
With how did it go? Was it good? Was the
interview of brother.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
The moderator was awful and ask the worst questions and
just copy and pasted my bio was the intro, but
it was it was the other the other people on
the panel great.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
And that is That's precisely why that moderator deserves to.
Speaker 6 (22:15):
Go over the rapids in a lead behind a barrel.
I rest my case, ladies and gentlemen. I'll have you
know I'm hurt. I'm very hurt at this point.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Beth. On that note, thank you so much. You've been wonderful.
I mean you might have told a few lies towards
the end, but we forgive you for those.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Was my favorite panel.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It was, Yes, there you were. That's the kind of
lie we like.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
There we go.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Shall I do the outro vast? Shall I do that? Please? Do? Okay?
M ladies and gentlemen. That brings us to the close
of another episode. Once again, If you've l like the show.
Can we ask you to leave a re you sign
up for regular episodes using your favorite podcast app, and
please do spread the word. So, mister Kahn, do you
(23:10):
think we could survive out in the wild?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
What if we have to live off our weeds?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And on that rather sad note, we've been your friends.
The Red Hot Chili writers on Murder Junction, See you
next time.
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