Dragged along to California during the Gold Rush, shy and bookish Lucy intends to be miserable until she can return to her New England home, and writes yearning letters to those she left behind. In 1849, twelve-year-old California Morning Whipple, who renames herself Lucy, is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a rough California mining town.

This novel is a murder mystery set in a remote gold-mining frontier town in 19th-century New Zealand. Arriving in New Zealand in 1866 a weary Englishman, Walter Moody, lands in a gold-mining frontier town on the coast of New Zealand to make his fortune and forever leave behind his family's shame. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to investigate what links three crimes that occurred on a single...

Jack and the butler stow away on a side-wheeler bound for California where they join the Gold Rush of 1849.

"The California Gold Rush, which began after the discovery of gold in 1848, was about much more than people trying to strike it rich. It was a total reshaping of the United States because of thousands making the arduous trek to the West Coast by land and sea. Some even came from Asia and Europe! In this noteworthy book, an important episode in U.S. history is told through text crafted for the struggling reader. Interesting fact boxes and carefully...