Gold Rush Girl

by Avi

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Gold Rush Girl is the type of book that I would have truly loved when I was younger. It has a fierce girl doing whatever she needs do in order to survive and take care of her family. It has adventure. It has a slim of history that, for whatever reason, has not been frequently used in YA and MG novels. In middle school and early high school, this would have been an awesome read for me.

One thing I will say for Candlewick Press is that they put out great, unique middle grade novels.

From a technical perspective, I will say that the writing style is a bit sluggish. Avi has been around for a while and like many other things in this world, writing styles have evolved. It’s a bit wordy and draggy, but not enough to distract heavily from the story. In fact, once things actually got going, I hardly noticed the writing style.

Gold Rush Girl took a little while to get going. The first 50 pages or so took Tory, her father, and brother from Rhode Island to San Francisco. In the grand scheme of things, this introduction served no overall purpose to the story other than basic background, and it was a bit of a struggle. Once the characters were settled in San Francisco, things started move along. The beginning dragged, but the rest of the story moved along decently.

The characters were not particularly deep or complicated, but I expect that much from a middle grade novel. They were not so flat as to make them indifferent, but they aren’t particularly exciting, either. I think overall there’s a decent balance to them, particularly for the target age group.

What I really loved about Gold Rush Girl was the setting. I’ve never read a book set during the California gold rush. I thought it was fantastic to enter part of a world I have known about, but never seen in fiction – it was the reason I requested the book from Candlewick in the first place. The setting did no let me down – San Francisco is there in all its early squalor. My favorite bit, barely related to the story itself, was the inclusion of a map of the San Francisco coast line, including locations where ruined ships from the era have been discovered. I am nothing if not a history nerd.

And so, with that, I would like to wholeheartedly recommend Gold Rush Girl for any middle grade reader who is interested in adventure and strong female protagonists in an historical fiction setting. I am definitely not the target audience for Gold Rush Girl, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t delightful for its intended audience.