Riefe's first novel outside of her Iroquois series (Mohawk Woman, etc.) displays her usual attention to historical merit. When Lucy Scott Mitchum's idealistic husband, Noah, gets bitten by the 1849 gold bug, she dutifully packs her worldly possessions in a prairie schooner and accompanies him from Baltimore to Sacramento with their four-year-old daughter in tow. While trouble crops up continually for Lucy and her kin, they sail through nearly unscathed. The family will at last reach Sacramento.

Happy Reading!