Linda Martin’s Reviews > California Gold > Status Update

Mack arrived in Los Angeles and it didn't take him long to find a way to fit in. He contacted someone he'd met earlier while on the road to San Francisco. It looks like opportunities are opening up for him. He's now 20 years old.

Finished part two of the book, "Welcome to the City 1887-1888." (Chapters 8-15.) SF people ... some liked Mack Chance, but the upper crust detested him. He's moving on toward Los Angeles. I'm about to start part three, "Life Among the Escrow Indians 1888-1889."

Ch.12 didn't ring true for me. It had a horse-drawn cart go from the San Francisco Bay to Yosemite and back in a week to ten days. I have a hard time believing they could go that fast and if so, poor horses! It is 164 miles, and at 20 miles/day that would be 8 days each way. Climbing up the Sierras surely slowed progress! Plus when they got there they just happened to run into John Muir. So unlikely.

Reading chapter 12 - at this rate I could be through about 400 pages of this book by the end of September. If I want to finish it by then, I'll have to step up my reading pace. (Classified in "things some readers think about.")

Chapters 9 through 11 - Three chapters today - I enjoyed reading these to learn more about Mack's experiences in San Francisco and then Palo Alto at the southern end of San Francisco Bay.

Chapters 6 through 8 - Mack arrived in Oakland, met a Chinese fisherman, went across the bay to San Francisco, and met a woman named Nellie who introduced him to 24 year old William Randolph Hearst. I had a hard time getting through these chapters even though chapter 7 was exceedingly short.

Today I read three chapters. This seems like a good pace. This is definitely a man-book, not a woman-book like the other novel I'm now reading, Christy by Catherine Marshall. I like the woman-book better which is understandable because I'm a woman, right? But this is well-written... just already too much this and too much that, but with interesting characters and philosophy as well. Mack is almost to the SF Bay Area.

I finished the prologue and chapter one. First impressions. This book is easily readable and keeps my attention. The author gives short vignettes of Mack Chance's travel experiences as he walks west toward California from Pennsylvania. This gives a sense of the hardships experienced on the journey without a tedious step-by-step examination of everything that happened whether interesting or not.