For California's Gold

by JoAnn Levy

Another young woman grows up the hard way in For California's Gold, by JoAnn Levy, a novel set during the gold rush of 1849. Timid Sarah Daniels makes the long trek to the west coast with her husband and four children, enduring cholera, Indian attacks, starvation and many other hardships. It is only when she finally settles in Nevada City that she begins to accept her new western home in this quietly eloquent tale.

268 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Sandra The Old Woman in a Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is as good as historical fiction gets. That is no surprise as the author is an acclaimed nonfiction writer as well. Her area of research and publishing is California women’s history. Her book They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush is a superb collection of women emigrant experiences during the gold rush. Her novel is a fictionalization of those experiences.

The historical details contained in For California’s Gold immerse the reader in the cross continental journey. Many histories focus on male ‘49ers and act as if no women made the trek. However, about 10% of the new Californians were women. Many of the women accompanied husbands without any, or with little, input into the decision to move west. This book tells one such tale.

This book includes the intricate details of the California Trail from Missouri to the Sierra gold fields - all the amazements and all the horrors those unaware travelers endured. It also covers the first several years of Gold Rush settlement in Sacramento, Nevada City, and other gold towns.

Levy’s book very briefly touches on the existing inhabitants of the Sierras, the indigenous societies. I think this book deserves to be balanced by reading an accounting of the gold rush on the regions Native Americans. For that I suggest An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. She also covers early statehood issues such as slavery, albeit briefly.

I’m very sad this book is out of print. It doesn’t look available through Amazon, but I found my copy through Triftbooks.com. It looks like they currently have it available. Seriously, if you love American historical fiction, seek this book out.

California is vast, and anyone interested in how and why it became the state it is today, should read more than this book. I put together a full California reading list you can find at this link.

California reading list


I plan on following the California Trail - one of our many National Trails- in my van later this year. This will be my guidebook, and a much more accurate one than the one those who traversed it real-time had.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to know what the California Gold Rush was like for a woman, read this. Very realistic with living, breathing characters and accurate settings. This is how historical fiction should read.

[Maura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know quite a bit about pioneer families migrating west in the 1800's. My family traveled by wagon in 1846 from Illinois to Oregon and then on to San Francisco. This is a very well researched book, and the protagonist, Sarah, faced many of the same hardships and losses that my great grandmother did on her journey. Brings everything to life for me. I think it's a tragic story of people unprepared for an exhausting and dangerous journey, a journey prompted mostly by the impulses of young and middle aged men, wanting adventure, riches or a better life. I have a feeling that very few women wanted to migrate west with small children or pregnant like my great great grandmother. She gave birth on the trail and amazingly, the baby survived. My great great grandmother was 6 at the time. The things she must have seen and experienced!

[Kathy Dickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed reading this book, and learned quite a bit of history from it (especially about the Gold Rush towns and people), I was rather disappointed in the end. The main character, Sarah, was somewhat emotionally flat and I had trouble connecting with her. I wondered..did she ever really love Caleb? Did she love Zeb? She certainly never tells us if she did, and did not even seem to see them as especially unique, good men and good partners for her. Zeb tells her he loves her and all she says in return is that "we need a house." Very odd.. All of the love stories (except the love for her children) do not tell us much and do not reach our hearts. That is a shame because it was otherwise a very good book.