The Iron Heel

Jack London (1878-1918) was an American author who earned renown across the globe for his fictional work, at a time when commercial magazine fiction was a market on the rise. Although he is known for fictional stories set in the Klondike Gold Rush, including White Fang and The Call of the Wild, London practiced what he wrote. On July 12, 1897, London and his brother in law, Captain Shepard, sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. London earned more illnesses than gold, suffering from scurvy and malnutrition, but the experience gave him the ability to very vividly depict stories in the terrain and climate, which would eventually make him an incredibly wealthy celebrity. London's two most popular novels are The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both of which take place in the Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century. White Fang details a wild wolf's journey into a domesticated pet, making it a natural companion novel for his best-known work, The Call of the Wild, which tells the opposite story of a domesticated dog transforming into a wild animal. In both novels, the dog is the story's protagonist, and London's novels are also somewhat revolutionary in the way they ascribe human emotions and thoughts to the dog. London's novels are easy enough to be read by teenagers, but they are complex and vivid enough to captivate adults as well.