Books published by publisher Balona Books

In the hills of Northern California rush the waters of the American River, icy with snowmelt from the Sierra Nevadas. Near the settlement once known as Gold Hill is the bit of land where Captain John Sutter built a sawmill, and where James Marshall saw the bright glitter of gold among pebbles in a clear calm backwater of the river. Word of that discovery bought hundreds of thousands of fortune seekers from all over the world. Later, others came, hunting different fortunes or escaping lives ruined in other lands. Among the later arrivals were the 77 men, women, and children of the Aizu Wakamatsu Colony, escapees from a civil war in Japan. This is a story of one of the members of that group: Kei--now remembered in history as Okei--and her life in America and how she finds common ground with a boy during a drought in the 1870s.

Precocious Emma Snow, a Boston girl, and her clever younger brother are taken by their fortune-hunting stepfather on a voyage through jungle and across oceans to Gold Rush California. Abandoned, the two make their way as muleskinners and encounter hard work, murderous bandits, native tribes, slave-seeking hunters, and new friends who help them survive in the wilderness.