River of Gold
In this sequel to When Eagles Call, Susan Dobbie once again introduces the Hawaiian Kimo Kanui. The novel opens in 1858 at the time of the Fraser River gold rush. With his wife recently dead, and his contract with the Hudson’s Bay Company coming to an end, Kimo is torn between returning to Hawaii with his daughter and staying with her in the Pacific Northwest. Either way, he wants to own land, and he needs gold to buy it. Joining up with his Hawaiian friend Moku and a black man, Ezekiel, Kimo travels north in search of gold. Using historical materials that she herself has discovered, Dobbie describes the trio’s arduous journey up the Fraser and then over the Cariboo Wagon Road recently completed by the Royal Engineers. At Hope they are joined by Morning Bird, a native woman whom Kimo saves from slavery. Once in the Cariboo, they have to build a cabin and prepare their rockers and sluices for the coming mining season — even as winter bears down upon them. Many encounters involve historical personages and situations, such as when they meet Judge Begbie after their supplies are stolen. At the end of the novel, Kimo and his friends have succeeded in digging out a small but sufficient amount of gold, but even more importantly Kimo finds that he has fallen in love with Morning Bird. He must now decide if his future lies under the warmth and security of the Hawaiian sun, or in being part of the new society now taking root in the Pacific colony.
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REVIEWS / AWARDS
Finalist: ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards (historical fiction category).
“Deserve[s] to be known and read.”
— Vancouver Sun
“[Dobbie] has again extracted the grist and grit of BC’s history and shaped it exceedingly well.”
— subTerrain
“An entertaining and instructive novel…. The author delivers a remarkable and unique perspective…. The reader’s reward is greater insight into the diverse and dramatic roots of early British Columbia.”
— British Columbia History
“I really enjoyed this book. The author has portrayed an exciting historical period and has worked in plenty of details without slowing down the pace of the novel.”
— Prairie Fire Review of Books
“The novel is picaresque in the best sense of the tradition of that sub-genre. It is linear and unsentimental, and does what good novels do: spin a story and bring some characters into the literary world. It is a close history of social and political upheaval, and champions the struggling individual at a dramatic moment in Canadian life.”
— Small Press Review, Issue 438-439, Vol. 41 Nos. 7-8, 2009.
