Ruth Fielding at Golden Pass: Or, The Perils of an Artificial Avalanche

Ruth Fielding has done what few women in 1925 have accomplished: she runs her own motion picture company. After the rapturous premiere of her latest film "Snowblind," Ruth leads her crew west to Montana's Golden Pass to shoot a daring Western. The mountains are treacherous, the cast is mutinous, and rival studio mogul Sol Bloomberg is scheming to destroy her. Ruth hires rugged star Layton Boardman, recently blacklisted by Bloomberg, and glamorous but volatile Viola Callahan despite warning signs. As production unfolds at Headwaters Ranch, accidents mount: Boardman is injured, Helen Cameron is accidentally shot, and the staged avalanche that gives the book its title threatens to become terrifyingly real. When Viola defects to Bloomberg's camp mid-production, leaving Ruth's company in ruins, an unexpected solution emerges. This is early Hollywood as adventure novel, where a young woman must direct, produce, and ultimately star in her own picture to save everything she's built.