Jason's Gold by Will Hobbs begins with fifteen-year-old Jason Hawthorn standing on the street in front of Grand Central Depot hawking newspapers. On that morning, July 17, 1897, the headline of the New York Herald was "Gold in Alaska". Hawthorn, like thousands of others, is immediately bitten by "Klondicitis" and the need to make the trek cross country and into the rugged wilds of Canada to reach Dawson City. The trek is a long and dangerous one, particularly when people begin to trek into Alaska and over the border into Canada, where they are faced with intolerable weather conditions, starvation, and mountains that are nearly impossible to pass.

It takes Jason Hawthorn nearly a year to make it from Seattle to Dawson City. Jason faces the loss of his inheritance, which is used to stake his brothers' claim, a trip aboard the Yakima as a stowaway, the meeting with the unscrupulous Frank Barker. The real journey begins after Jason meets a young Jack London. Many months are spent getting to Skagway and then traversing the Chilkoot Pass into Dawson City.

Jason learns a lot about himself along the way, and the reader gets to go along on the journey as Jason learns about responsibility, faith in his own abilities, and perhaps most importantly, that not everyone in the world sees things the way he does, particularly when it comes to strength of character and doing the right things for the right reasons.

The final destination for the prospectors is Dawson City, also known as The Golden City. Dawson City is located in the upper part of western Canada near the Alaska border. Dawson City is the site of the latest gold rush and was formed by the prospectors that traveled cross country to make their fortunes. In the beginning there was nothing in the region. That all changed after George Washington Carmack staked his first claim.

Hobbs describes the terrain and the difficulties of the journey well enough to make the reader think that he is there alongside Jason Hawthorn and the others that have traveled thousands of miles to live their dreams of becoming rich from panning gold. One can almost feel the cold as Jason treks out into the snow to find food, the sleet and rain on Laberge, and the numbness and pain of carrying many hundreds of pounds over the Golden Stairs.

There is a lot to be learned about Jason Hawthorn, including his sterling character, sense of right and wrong and astounding amount of drive and determination. Every time Hawthorn feels his determination waning or something happens to beat him down, someone or something comes to his aid, as if his deceased father is watching over him and prodding him to keep moving forward.

The relationships Jason makes along the way will certainly be memorable and lasting ones. They include meetings with Frank Barker, Jack London, Jamie Dunavant and Charlie Maguire.

In the end, approximately one hundred thousand people attempted to get to the Klondike to make their fortunes. About forty thousand actually made it, many died, and in the end only a few hundred people struck it rich. In the case of the Hawthorns, they benefitted from the Gold Rush, but as entrepreneurs.

The main facts in the book are true. Hobbs simply added to them to create an adventure one will never forget.