If you haven't seen a Discovery Channel gold-hunting show, you might picture a gold prospector as a relic of the Wild West: a TNT-toting, bearded old man wildly swinging a pick on the hunt for nuggets, guided by old maps, superstition, legends and instinct. It's still predominantly a man's world, and still often fanatical, but these days the golden dream attracts people from all walks of life—and 25-year-old Tyler Mahoney (Australian star of the Discovery Channel's Gold Rush series) is leading the way.

Hailing from Kalgoorlie, Tyler is a fourth-generation gold miner and has seen up close how gold fever makes normally reasonable people do the most irrational things. From mysterious corpses in the desert to huge heists, backstabbings to life-changing finds, Tyler unearths hair-raising stories and legends from Australia's gold prospecting past and present, while sharing her experience forging her way in a traditionally male domain. She writes candidly about the push and pull of the gold world in her own life, as well as her struggles with bipolar disorder —a mental-health challenge that in some ways parallels the feast-or-famine nature of prospecting itself.

With humor, grit and an infectious zest for life, "gold digger" Tyler Mahoney stakes her claim.