Sierra: A Novel of the California Gold Rush

Two young men are caught up in the gold rush to California. One, Ulysses McQueen, an Iowa farmer, leaves his pregnant wife behind, and heads west hungering for gold. The other, Stephen Jarvis, a New York cooper's apprentice, takes his army discharge in California and soon is supplying the burgeoning gold camps in the Sierras. He meets and loves Rita Concepcion Estrada, but her family swiftly halts his advances. Two young men, making their fortunes in the goldfields of California, each with a broken heart. We experience the adventure of the gold rush, but we also feel its undertow: families left behind and never seen again, loves lost, fortunes not made. A wonderfully mutifaceted portrayal of pioneer life. ‒BOOKLIST In this tale of two men whose paths cross during the exhilarating California Gold Rush, Wheeler proves himself, yet again, a fluid master of the western.... The strange paths of these two men finally cross in the gold fields, where the precious ore is elusive and wealth is fleeting, but their love for the two women endures. No fool's gold that, this is a deliberate examination of greed, dreams, and the human spirit. ‒Publishers Weekly