A few weeks ago, I started to hear about Rae Carson's Walk the Earth a Stranger. The first chapters are online. I've started reading the sample chapters today because her book is on the longlist for the National Book Award. I ordered a copy of the book and will be back to finish this review when I finish reading her book. In my notes below, I raise some questions.
Walk the Earth a Stranger is published by Greenwillow and has a character, Jefferson, whose mother is Cherokee. Here's the synopsis:
The first book in a new trilogy from acclaimed New York Times-bestselling author Rae Carson. A young woman with the magical ability to sense the presence of gold must flee her home, taking her on a sweeping and dangerous journey across Gold Rush era America. Walk on Earth a Stranger begins an epic saga from one of the finest writers of young adult literature.
Lee Westfall has a secret. She can sense the presence of gold in the world around her. Veins deep beneath the earth, pebbles in the river, nuggets dug up from the forest floor. The buzz of gold means warmth and life and home—until everything is ripped away by a man who wants to control her. Left with nothing, Lee disguises herself as a boy and takes to the trail across the country. Gold was discovered in California, and where else could such a magical girl find herself, find safety?
Rae Carson, author of the acclaimed Girl of Fire and Thorns series, dazzles with the first book in the Gold Seer Trilogy, introducing a strong heroine, a perilous road, a fantastical twist, and a slow-burning romance, as only she can.
Summary is in regular text; my comments are in italics.
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January of 1849
Chapter One
The main character, Leah, is out hunting. She’s wounded a deer and is tracking it when she comes across a sensation she’s come to know as one she gets when she’s near a gold nugget, or, a gold vein. She finds the deer, kills it, and wants to cut the parts she can carry but the “gold sense” overwhelms her and she starts digging in the snow till she finds a nugget the size of a large, unshelled walnut. Her gold sense tells her it is about 90% pure, and will be worth a hundred dollars.
On page 8 we learn about Jefferson—or rather—his dad. Leah remembers him thinking she had a good aim. We learn that Leah works hard, hunting and farming, and panning for gold, too, because her dad has no sons who would do that work. Girls in town poke fun at her strong hands and strong jaw. She’s glad they don’t know about her gold sense.
Chapter Two
We meet Leah’s dad, who is sick with a violent cough. He tells her a much-loved story about a nugget he’d found when she was a baby, and how he’d hid it, but two-year-old Leah had found it. He re-hid it, and she found it again. That’s how they learned about her gold sense. They keep it secret because people would want her to find gold for them, especially since “the Georgia gold rush played itself out long ago” (p. 13). Surface gold is mostly gone, but Leah knows there’s more, deep underground. She also knows that it would take more than her and her dad and pickaxes to get at it. Her dad doesn’t want to buy slaves to get it because he was raised Methodist and that "back in the day" the church was against slavery.
Georgia... homeland of the Cherokee Nation. They were forcibly removed from their homelands. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that they were a sovereign nation, President Jackson defied the Supreme Court and ordered their removal. They were rounded up in 1838. Many were held in prison camps awaiting departure for Indian Territory. Carson gestures to history of Methodists and slaves, but doesn't give readers similar context for who owned this land prior to Leah and her family.
Her dad asks her where she found the nugget and they realize she found it on McCauley land. She wants to keep it but her dad tells her she can’t keep it. Her dad says he’ll return it when he goes to Charlotte, NC to assay the bag of gold dust they keep hidden. Turning it in in town would draw people to their property. Taking it to Charlotte is better because no one there knows them. But, since he’s not well, Leah thinks her dad is not likely to make the trip. She offers to go but he won’t let her because it’d be dangerous.
Chapter Three
The next day, Leah takes their wagon to school. Something is not right. Kids aren’t rushing around playing. She looks for Jefferson (p. 20):
His face is framed by thick, black hair and a long, straight Cherokee nose he got from his mama. An old bruise yellows the sharp line of his cheekbone.
Debbie's comments:
Noting he is Cherokee and wondering how that will play out as I keep reading.
Jefferson has a newspaper in hand and tells her that gold has been discovered in California. It says that President Polk announced the discovery. Because gold is everywhere, Leah wonders how much is in California, such that the President would announce it. She tells him she thinks that everyone in the town, Dahlonega, are going to go to California. Dahlonega “was built on a gold rush of its own” (p. 21).
Debbie's comments:
Dahlonega. Sounds like a Native word. Carson tells us that Dahlonega was built on a gold rush but again, doesn't tell readers who that land belonged to. I'll look up history of that town.
Jefferson thinks there’s plenty of gold out there and says “someone like me could…” We learn (by way of narration) that his dad is a “mean Irish prospector” and that is mom is “a sweet Cherokee mama who fled with her brothers ten years ago, when the Indians were sent to Oklahoma Territory” (p. 21). Nobody in town blames her for taking off. His “someone like me” means (p. 22):
“a stupid, motherless Injun,” which is one of the dumber things people call Jefferson, if you ask me, because he’s the smartest boy I know.
Oh... this is interesting. His mom "fled" in 1839 when they were "sent" to Oklahoma Territory... I think that's soft-pedaling what happened. Both words are accurate, but both also obscure the violence and the very important history of the Cherokee Nation's long fight to keep their land, that they ended up in the Supreme Court who ruled in their favor, that President Jackson ordered their removal! Cherokee's fled, but they were being chased by armed soldiers and the militia, too. I'm not sure why her son stayed behind. I'll dig in to some materials and see how that could have worked. It is possible, of course, but here's where I get into plausibility.
That said, my gut clenches to think of Jefferson heading west to seek gold. Is he going to do to California Indians what was done to Cherokees?
Good that Carson pushes back right away on the "stupid Injun" but wondering what it adds to the story to have it there in the first place. Right now it seems like it serves to make Leah out to be A Good White Person (using caps there, thinking of Anne Sibley O'Brien's comment to my post about dinner with Deborah Wiles).
Leah and Jefferson talk about how much it would cost for them to head to California. He invites her to go with him, that they can tell people they’re married, or a brother and sister. As she heads home after school, she thinks about marriage, and Jefferson. She hears two shots and when she gets home discovers someone has killed her dad. Her mom is also shot and tells her to trust someone, that they were wrong to be alone as they have been. She tells her to run, and then dies.
Chapter Four
Leah grabs a gun and heads to the McCauley homestead, seeking Jefferson. At his house, his dad is drunk. She finds Jefferson at the woodshed, chopping wood. He tells her that everyone in town thinks her dad has a stash of gold and that once they hear of his death they’ll be there, looking for it. Leah tells him it is true. When they get to her house, she stays outside while Jefferson goes in to look around. As she waits, she can’t feel the hum of her gold sense and realizes the bag of gold dust is gone.
Chapter Five
Inside, she lifts the floorboards where they kept the bag. It is gone. It was worth over a thousand dollars. She finds the nugget and gives it to Jefferson. He says he wishes she had trust him with their secret and she thinks of how much else he doesn’t know (about her gold sense). The next few days are a blur. Nobody else’s home has been bothered, so the Sheriff thinks it was just someone passing through who had heard the stories of their stash. Finding nothing, that person kept on going.
The day of her parents’ funeral, Jefferson tells her he’s going west and wants her to go with him. With her gold sense, she thinks that “California is the Promised Land” (p. 46) but thinks she can’t leave her home. Jefferson goes on without her, saying he’ll wait for a while, in Independence.
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