How Much of These Hills is Gold takes place in the Old West during the gold rush years but this is not your typical ‘western’. A gentle, sensitive story of a Chinese-American family, it’s about belonging, yearning, and seeking a home in a place where both the land and its inhabitants are hostile.

Our tale begins with the two children, Lucy and Sam, striking out alone to find somewhere to bury their father. Flashing back, we learn more about their parents — Ba who catches gold fever and Ma who just wants her little family to be ‘rich in choices’. Later, the story skips ahead five years to a slightly older Lucy and Sam who, having separated, pursue their independence in very different ways.

It’s a moving story and I’m always inclined to enjoy historical fiction that brings diversity to the fore; unearthing new perspectives in time-worn genres is like panning for gold and I hope the rush continues for a long time. But what l liked most about HMoTHiG was its vivid images — blazing pale yellow hills under a yawning sky, dusty roads and dried up lakes, glowing fire light — chromatic layers adding to the narrative of ‘earth’ (a home) and ‘gold’ (security).

The novel lost some ground for me in the final third (the part where Lucy and Sam are older) as introducing new characters and situations at this late stage diluted some of its earlier power. Zhang’s villains were numerous and a little too one-dimensional overall. But for any book to so completely capture my attention in a very distractible time is no mean feat. 4 stars.

How Much of These Hills is Gold is the captivating story of two siblings orphaned at the ages of 12 and 11 in the tough times as the gold has all but run out at the end of America's Gold Rush. The story starts with the death of their father and what Lucy and Sam do next but then transports us back through their lives and the lives of their Ba and Ma. Your first impressions are changed as you learn more about the family, and the hardships they have experienced.
C Pam Zhang's writing is beautiful and truly transports you to another era as you are fully immersed in this story.

I was given a copy of How Much of These Hills is Gold by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

This book was not for me at all. The language was stilted, some of the metaphors bordered on the ridiculous.

I'm afraid that the writing Zhang's style is just not for me. Lots of her sentences are phrased oddly: 'Small, Sam is', 'red eyes, flesh raw at the rims'. Or she uses purply metaphors : 'Sam's boots beat an impatient tattoo'.
I'm afraid that I just find her prose somewhat contrived. These staccato sort of sentences are just not my cup of tea. I hope other readers will be able to appreciate Zhang's writing more than I did.

'How Much of These Hills is Gold' follows two Chinese-American young sisters navigating the hills of mid-Western America looking for a place to bury their father - Ba - who has recently passed away having already lost their mother previously. The book follows them over a number of years as they grow up trying to find their place in the world.

Honestly, this book crept up on me. It took me a while to get invested in the characters but once I was invested I was absolutely captivated. C Pam Zhang’s writing is sublime. There isn't much this book fails to consider. Complex issues of gender, class, race, family (to name a few) are so delicately interwoven with a skill that sets this book up to be a modern classic.

5 Stars!

Thank you to Virago for the reading copy

This original and compelling historical novel is set in the last days of the Californian Gold Rush and follows two young Chinese girls who are left orphaned by the death of their father in a country and society hostile to them. With some ingenuity, they manage to fend for themselves and set off on a quest to give Ba a “proper” burial according to the rituals their mother taught them. The book is a remarkably accomplished debut, with a compelling storyline and wonderful characterisation. It brings to life a largely ignored group of people, who have been written out of the dominant narrative of the West due to their race. This brings the Chinese community centre stage and adds a new historical perspective to what we think we know. The story of an immigrant family trying to succeed in a West dominated by the white man shows how much harder it is to pursue the American Dream when your race is not accepted. There’s a lot going on here and much to ponder – questions of race, gender, immigration, who owns the narrative, family, loyalty and sibling rivalry. A multi-layered novel written with verve and empathy and a deep understanding of the historical context. A great read.

How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a technically accomplished novel but I found it somewhat clinical and cold.

Set in the Californian goldrush, the novel follows the fortunes of a Chinese migrant family. Initially, the two young girls. Lucy and Sam, are trying to find a suitable place to bury their father Ba. Ba seems to have been a cruel father led by drink and aggression. Other sections follow, one offering Ba's explanation of what he was trying to achieve; there's Ma's story of first meeting Ba, and there is Lucy in a goldrush town some years after burying Ba.

Each section is packaged into chunks with symbolic names - the significant of which was lost on me - and there was a recurring theme of a tiger. The writing is good, but there is simply no empathy. Sure, there are some universal themes - the migrant experience, racism, possible trans-sexuality, loyalty, honour - but I'm not sure I ever believed the characters were real. It felt like fine clothes hung on tailor's dummies.

There is magical realism too with Ba supposedly writing to the girls from beyond the grave.

Perhaps I was distracted by the disintegration of the world around me (Covid-19 lockdown) which made this a really long slog of a book, but I suspect that even in normal times this would have been quite a hard book to pick up.

Pure gold.
I expected a western cowboy type of novel. This is anything but, full of adventure, betrayal and love. Lucy and Sam are the daughters of gold prospectors, they live in the poorest of shacks and are often on the verge of starvation. The story that leads to their opening plight, unfolds from all four participants, each person explains the story from their own viewpoint, with the reasons behind their actions. Lucy and Sam leave the camp and start their travels taking unknown to Lucy the body of their dead father, they meet cruelty and kindness on their journey.
What makes a book a book?

I read this in the middle of COVID 19, I just want to make that clear as I genuinely believe that in any other time my impression of the book might have been different. But, boy did I struggle with this book initially, I found the writing stilted and it was hard for me to become immersed in the story. I did not get into this book until I was 41%, well past when I would have given up normally. Well I am so glad I persisted, the story goes back to describe what her parents went through to arrived where they did. But be warned it is both harrowing and honest and left me with so many questions. I found the book frustrating that it only hinted at things and I was still left asking why, where, when. I am English, so maybe it is because this part of history was never taught in English school but in parts I was confused and the story didn't rectify my frustrations. I can really appreciate why this book might be popular but am afraid it wasn't for me.

Lucy and Sam must flee from their dusty mining village after the death of their Ba. They travel through the landscape of the West, always outsiders, searching for peace and a home. As they grow older, their desires for different kinds of 'peace'pull them apart.

This is a beautifully written book with great powers of description. The landscapes and the incredible poverty of the gold rush era are very vividly brought to life. I loved the integration of Chinese language and symbolism with the narrative. Early parts of the novel are really haunting and spare, and i felt that the later sections were less memorable. Still a.grippingly lyrical and original read.

As debuts go, I'm not sure you'll ever find one with a stronger voice or clearer point of view. From the first paragraph, you're blown away by Zhang's prose - urgent and visceral, you get a strong sense of the characters immediately.

A story about a harsh world, with dire consequences, How Much of These Hills is Gold is a remarkable story about sibling relationships and carving a place in the world.

C Pam Zhang takes a new look at the American gold rush and the myths of the West in her debut How Much of These Hills is Gold. The book starts towards the tail end of the gold rush, but moves back and forward in time to cover a period from 1842 through to 18??. And at the centre of the tale is a Chinese family (although China is never referred to by name), and in particular two daughters who grow up in a milieu that is dependent on the labour of their parents but does not create a place for them.
When the book opens Lucy is twelve and her sister Sam is eleven. Their mother has been gone for three years and their violent, often drunk and gambling addicted father has just died. The two flee from the small coal mining town in which they were living, stealing a horse and heading out west, taking their father’s remains with them. This is their first odyssey across the empty, ravaged land, full of ghosts and remnants of life before the coming of the ranchers and miners. The story then drops back into their tragic history and the even more tragic history of their parents before catching up with the pair five years later when their paths have diverged and their fortunes changed.
How Much of These Hills is Gold provides a view of the mythology of the American west from an outsiders point of view. Neither Lucy, who tries desperately to fit in with “civil” society (usually to her own detriment), nor Sam, who takes on a male persona and takes to the cowboy life, ever truly fit in. They yearn for acceptance and sometimes get close only to find that they were actually being used by those who they thought were friends, that the doors they thought they were walking through were slammed in their faces, and that they only have each other to rely on. And readers will keep rooting for the two even as the weight of history and culture bears inexorably down on them.
How Much of these Hills is Gold is a personal tale of the two girls and their family. But through them, Zhang tells the much larger story of the bringing of Chinese labour to the US to build the railroads, and dig in the mines, their exploitation and their yearning for home. And more broadly, Zhang opens up a conversation with deeply rooted views of American history and challenging to views of race, gender and class. Making this a fascinating, engaging, assured debut.

How much of these hills is gold is a novel set in the wild west of America, during the gold rush.  It looks at Chinese immigrants, who you'll probably have seen in films set during these times, building rail roads.

We follow two siblings, who are trying to survive in this harsh world, and flash back to their earlier childhoods, and their parents.

This isn't a light read, but was a very interesting look at a time that has been so documented from the white cowboys point of view.

I enjoyed this book.  It's a overwhelming experience of a different time and place, but one that is well written, and takes out to the wild landscapes described.  It's a tale of siblings, their love, their rivalry, and their commitment to family, all set within a world that we've seen often in films and books.  It gives a lot of insights and gives a glimpse of what life was like.

 How Much of These Hills is Gold  was published on 9th April 2020,  and is available to buy on  Amazon   and on   Waterstones .  The Waterstones link takes you to a signed edition!  I've found a  link  to where you can search for local bookshops, including independent!

If you're interested in historical books from a different perspective, then I think you'd enjoy  The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins. 

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to  Little, Brown Book Group and Virago  (the publishers) for this book.

Check out my  GoodReads profile  for more reviews.

Sometimes a book comes that I have no idea how to rate. It's as if it leaves me numb, unable to take a decision, perpetually thinking: "I have no idea how I feel about this book. I can talk about it, the parts I loved and what didn't work for me, yet overall I just cannot say how I felt".

How Much of These Hills Is Gold is that book(so far, this year!). So many elements that I care greatly about are packed inside this book: migration - checked, strong female characters - checked, hard life - checked, people surviving while fighting hard with an unyielding environment - checked; raw but powerful writing - checked. Yet somehow all I could think about while reading it was: I've read this before. I've already read this story in a form or another. And I guess that's the gist of my issues with it!

Hard to believe this is a debut. Well written and absorbing, this story tells one nit elsewhere told. Very sad but so were the times. Highly recommend

Set in the western United States, in a time when settlements were built on the backs of the goldrush, Lucy and Sam are two sisters on the run with a stolen horse and the dead body of their father on their backs. As the story progresses we learn that their mother was from China and as they look different, they are treated cruelly everywhere they go. They are constantly running from their history while searching for their future. Sometimes together and sometimes apart, but their love and the belief they were raised with of family first keeps them united.
Part One of the book tells of how Lucy and Sam are on the run and the very recent history that got them to that point.
Part Two details the rest of their lives up until this point. The relationships between family, the way tradition shapes the way people behave, how parents and children never live up to each other's expectations.
Part Three is about embracing a future for one, and fate for the other.

I did enjoy this book. It was well written and it is always great to find good historic fiction not set during WWII. That being said, it did not set me on fire and fill me with an obsession to keep turning the page. I wanted to finish the book so that I could write my review and get it posted on the day the book is released rather than because I had to find out the ending.

On the ending - extremely meh! I was happy with Sam's ending and Lucy's decision, I found it perfectly fitting and would have preferred the book to end there. However, it sort of drips on for a bit and then ends mid-sentence.

I would have also liked a better resolution in regards to their mother. I did really like the section between parts two and three where the father is a ghost on the wind and he tells a story to Lucy while she sleeps. That part was magical, and so well imagined and expertly delivered.

I liked reading a book set during a time period I have not visited before with a mix of cultures that created an interesting dynamic in the storytelling.

Overall, I would say that this is a good book and worth a read, but certainly not life-altering. I think this is mostly because the story is told from Lucy's perspective and I felt no emotional tie to her as a character at all. I did not feel anger or sadness with or for her at any point in her quite tragic story. Whereas Sam I did care about. But perhaps she would have seemed less special if she wasn't so unreachable.

I received a pre-release copy of #HowMuchOfTheseHillsIsGold for free from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and the book is available now.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy.

A fresh, assured take on the Western and coming-of-age genres from a feminist and immigrant viewpoint, this novel is set in the mid-19th century and is the story of Sam and Lucy, the Chinese-American daughters of a prospector father and an immigrant mother, who are left to fend for themselves when their parents die.

The tale itself is relatively slight - at the age of 11 (Sam) and 12 (Lucy) they take off looking for the right place to bury their father's body, then go their separate ways, to be reunited six years later only to part once more. But it is all about the journey, as all good coming of age tales are.

The setting is Sierra Nevada, California, at the tail end of the gold rush, when the hills have been picked clean unless you know where to look, and prospector families are instead having to turn to the harsh, sparse existence offered by coal mining. Being Chinese in appearance, Lucy and Sam and their parents are treated as the lowest of the low, living in a former chicken shed whose stink never quite dissipates, and not welcome at the makeshift school set up by a do-gooder from the East Coast who is writing a history of this community. The girls have been born here, and as it turns out, so has their father, but it is assumed by all and sundry that they have come from far away. Their speech is accented and their culture is heavily influenced by their mother, who came from China in search of a better life in her twenties. Thus it is that when their father dies (their mother having died, as they think, three years earlier), they set off with his body in a trunk, looking for the right place to bury him where he will be at rest. Lucy is the good girl, trying to be feminine and civilised in an environment that is not conducive to anything of the sort. Sam, a year younger, has turned herself into the son her father wanted but never had. She cuts her hair short, carries a gun, wears boys' clothing with a hidden pocket where she secretes a carrot or stone to simulate a masculine bulge.

Chinese tiger lore melds seamlessly with tales of the buffalo that roamed the harsh Sierra Nevada landscape recently enough that their carcasses, picked clean, can still be seen dotted around on trails through the hills, with a magical realism that nicely captures the threshold between the child and adult brain. The girls' belief in their parents' stories does not interfere with an instinct for self-preservation in an environment where children, especially girls, are far from being protected and nurtured. Fully a quarter of the book deals with the journey into the hills until they find a place to bury what is left of their father after a month of dragging his decomposing corpse behind them in a trunk. Once that is done to Sam's satisfaction, it becomes apparent that while Lucy yearns for the civilisation offered by the small town of Sweetwater just beyond the next ridge, Sam has very different ideas. The girls part ways, and it is Lucy's story that dominates for the next six years, along with flashbacks to her parents' earlier history narrated by their father from beyond the grave. When Sam turns up again, to all the world a handsome, charming young man, the sisters set off again on a journey to the coast, in search of a boat to China that, for Lucy, is never to be.

The landscape is a key component of the story, harsh and unwelcoming but in the early stages of being tamed as settlers move into the west. For all her Chinese identity, the land she was brought up in shapes Lucy, and keeps her tied to it, in the same way that her father knew it intimately as a gold prospector. It is a lawless land, where violence and robbery are commonplace and the law, far from protecting people, is turned against them especially if they are not white. Yet this is where Lucy belongs, and where she will stay whatever the cost.

This is a complex, riveting story that encompasses big questions of gender, race and belonging. A very fine debut indeed.

C Pam Zhang’s striking confident debut places us in the nineteenth century American West in the dying days of the Gold Rush. Prospecting turns to tragedy for one family of Chinese heritage. The novel opens grimly with the father’s corpse and two young siblings Lucy and Sam taking to desperate measures to obtain two silver dollars to close their father’s eyes.
Uprooting themselves once again the children are forced to grow up during their search for a new settlement with the prospect of gold as their salvation. They bring with them their father’s dead body looking for a place to bury him. One section switches from third person narration to allowing the dead father to tell his story which does answer the questions the readers will have about the characters and their predicament.
Main character Lucy is hard to get a grip on. I wasn’t always sure of her motives. I was hoping for something from her viewpoint but this never happened. Her motivation seems to be based on the notion “family is family”. Much easier to read is Sam, thirsting for adventure with the same ideas as their father that gold would provide solutions.
Where I liked this novel most of all is when it slipped into backstory, the father’s narration and the family’s life before the events at the start of the novel where their pregnant mother encourages Lucy to get an education from a man besotted by the family’s exoticness. “Beauty is a weapon” Ma informs her daughter but that’s not always easy to use living hand to mouth in the open air of the American West.
As much as I admired the writing I wasn’t always sure here this novel was heading and once again I find present tense narrative distracting. Lucy’s “education” is completed in a town called Sweetwater where she settles at one point in a section with a distinct change of tone. Sometimes the writing is feverish which gives the work a haunted, nightmarish quality which puts demands on the reader whilst at other times it reminded me both of Sebastian Barry’s recent novels (perhaps brought more clearly into focus as I have so recently read “A Thousand Moons”(2020) and I did find Zhang’s novel stronger) and of the New Zealand set “The Luminaries” (2013) by Eleanor Catton in more ways than its prospecting for gold themes. That book became a Man Booker Prize-winner so I think Zhang is on very strong ground here to turn heads with this literary debut.
How Much Of These Hills is Gold is published today (April 9th 2020) by Virago in the UK. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.
advance review copy.

Zhang is an excellent writer, and there's no doubting the quality of her prose but what slightly let the book down for me personally was the second section- the flashback to Lucy and Sam's childhood. I really felt that the opening section did enough to get a flavour of what Ma and Ba were like, without the need to go back in time and demonstrate it. That,s genuinely the only flaw with the book for me and I'm sure that other people would disagree with me. Good book all round but just slightly short of great for me. Thanks for the chance to review it, Netgalley and publishers

How Much of These Hills is Gold is a powerful and captivating debut novel and the untold story of the arrival of Chinese-American immigrants to the US during the Gold Rush but also a novel about the conflict between two siblings, carrying the body of their newly deceased father across a harsh landscape. Set primarily in the 1860s at a time when the whole area is being opened up to accommodate settlers we meet twelve-year-old Lucy and eleven-year-old Sam who have lost their mother a while ago and now have also lost their father and guiding hand, Ba. Having travelled to America for a better life and to live the American Dream they quickly realise that the grass is not always greener on the other side. They face disgusting racism that was rife at the time and everything they attempt appears to be difficult to deliver. The landscape very much plays a dominant role in the book with its sheer brutality and oppressiveness. It creates a claustrophobic and often harsh atmosphere.

This is nothing short of an exquisite and simply mesmerising tale and it manages to be both original and deeply moving. You are instantly drawn to by the family and cast of characters and the hardships and adversity they face only further endear them to you. There were times that my heart was breaking for them and I was desperate to see them get a break. It highlights the bounce-back ability and boldness of the human spirit and so ensues the problem with capitalism where those who are wealthy stay that way and those manual workers faced perpetually with the struggle to makes ends meet remain poor. I enjoyed the way there was many philosophical and thought-provoking topics, immigration, race, gender, sibling rivalry, to name a few, broached throughout and there are many wise words that could transfer easily into today’s political climate. I can not recommend this stunning book highly enough.

A haunting and evocative read and one that will not be forgotten easily. Many thanks to Virago for an ARC.