With a story that is less a period piece than a timeless and richly comic coming-of-age story, Cushman remains on a roll." Kirkus Reviews with Pointers, "Cushman's heroine is a delightful character, and the historical setting is authentically portrayed. Lucy's story, as the author points out in her end notes, is the story of many pioneer women who exhibited great strength and courage as they helped to settle the West." School Library Journal, Starred "The recent Newbery medalist plunks down two more strong-minded women, this time in an 1849 mining camp-a milieu far removed from the Middle Ages of her first novels, but not all that different when it comes to living standards. (Aug."Cushman's heroine is a delightful character, and the historical setting is authentically portrayed. The writing reflects her expert craftsmanship for example, Lucy's brother Butte, dead for lack of a doctor, is eulogized thus: ""He was eleven years old, could do his sums, and knew fifty words for liquor."" A coming-of-age story rich with historical flavor. Here she also renders serious social issues through sharply etched portraits: a runaway slave who has no name of his own, a preacher with a congregation of one, a raggedy child whose arms are covered in bruises. As in her previous books, Newbery Award winner Cushman (The Midwife's Apprentice) proves herself a master at establishing atmosphere. Over years of toil and hardship, Lucy realizes, somewhat predictably, that home is wherever she makes one. California rebels by renaming herself Lucy and by hoarding the gold dust and money she earns baking dried apple and vinegar pies, saving up for a journey home. Her mother, a restless widow with an acid tongue, has uprooted her children from their home in Massachusetts to make a new life in Lucky Diggins.
In a voice so heartbreakingly bitter that readers can taste her homesickness, California Morning Whipple describes her family's six-year stay in a small mining town during the Gold Rush.
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