How Much of These Hills is Gold

I found this lyrical debut to be both heartbreakingly beautiful and profoundly moving. It’s an intimate tale that explores the bonds between family, There is a hint of magical realism and a dash of western adventure. The prose is  beautiful  and the characters are fiercely real. Storytelling at its very best.

This vibrant and descriptive novel is set in the western United States largely in the 1860s at the time when the area is being opened up to western settlers due to the discovery of gold deposits. The tale is largely told through the perspective of Lucy, only 12 at the start of the story. She is living with her younger sister Sam (by this time passing as a boy) and her Ba. Ma is a matter of memory as she apparently died in childbirth some years previously. The family, as the story reveals, are Chinese so the rules (and laws) for them are different and unkind. They live in a poor shack; Ba has a job in the local (coal) mines, but is still also trying (illegally) to find gold deposits. Within presenting a plot “spoiler”, in short, Ba will die and Sam will insist that, following Chinese tradition, his body be taken to the correct place for burial. So the girls set off into the wilds to find it. After the burial there are new choices to be made. Lucy would like to settle in a secure place, Sam wants to move elsewhere but is not sure where. Lucy moves to a small town nearby and sets up life there. But the reappearance of Sam some years later trips off a series of problems and they both have to move on.
The novel is about the Chinese immigrant experience in these harsh times – times exacerbated by race and sexual discrimination which makes vulnerable people even more so. What little that can be acquired or achieved can be wiped out by violence, weather or law changes in an instance – we are shown many instances of this. In time flashbacks we are also told of the experiences of both Ba and Ma when they arrived in the States – their false expectation of what life would be like, what compromises they had to make and their actions for survival. They show the reader how they married, had children and through scarcity grew to be the people their children saw (and were moulded by) in their earlier years, Sam, adhering to his father, will carry a different experience or understanding than Lucy who was closer to her mother and had more of the earlier family life where US realities were melded with Chinese family culture before things became increasingly desperate.
Lucy is shown as having a deep visceral attachment to the land and landscape in which she was born and raised– these form her sense of place as to where she should be. The landscape itself is a key character in this novel – depicted in a strong visual way with a full sense of place – from geology and soil through to plants and beasts, water, weather and scarcity.  Zhang has quietly peopled it with characters: hardworking, often short lived, lazy, kind, careless and parasitical all totally believable. She has created a secure sense of time as well, pulling no punches about what went on in the past but casually recognising people’s constraints and weaknesses that led to their choices and actions.
Zhang is a brilliant story teller for all these reasons. The only criticism one might make (being pernickety) is that to unravel the tale of the girls’ parents, when the children were orphaned so young, the achievements and understandings of the girls are perhaps greater than likely – so this aspect requires a suspension of disbelief. – although young orphaned children being left vulnerable and open to abuse was real. But do not let that put you off from reading this first rate novel. Emigration to new lands and cultures, having to cope with difference, hostility and harsh finances; watching children grow with different experiences, values and understanding of home are not just “historical” issues. What do family, community, respect and decency really mean? The images and questions of this tale continue to haunt.

I’ve read many novels set in the days of the Gold Rush but never quite like this before. We see that time, the excitement, disappointment and longing through the eyes of two Chinese-American siblings, 12 year old Lucy and 11 year old Sam. Through the four sections of the book, we follow them in a non-linear narrative as it flows from one, then the other as we see their journey as outsiders not just in a country but in a time of economic excitement.

What I really enjoyed here was the way the author mixed in myth and mysticism, folklore and culture in a way I’d never read before. The American dream seen through the eyes of Chinese Immigrants. 

There was a lot to like here, including the Chinese cultural references, the idea of immigration, leaving ones home, finding a new one and dealing with racism along the way. Very relevant today when the Americans feel as if these newcomers are stealing their jobs and potential wealth.
The language of the novel simply adds to its weaving, lyrical yet hard-hitting message.

This is an astonishingly stunning, timeless and original piece of epic historical adventure fiction from the truly talented C. Pam Zhang that heartbreaking resonates in our contemporary world today. She fuses myths and fiction that comprise history and those that write it with the cultural folklore and myths that immigrants and their families bring with them in their conflicts, struggle and search for identity, a sense of belonging and home, amidst their efforts to survive in the face of abuse, exploitation and relentless hostility to their presence. Set in the dying days of the Californian gold rush, the non-linear narrative is structured into four parts, stitching together the past, present and future of the Chinese-American siblings, 12 year old Lucy and 11 year old Sam.

Having already suffered the loss of their mother, Lucy and Sam lose their father, Ba, a coal miner turned gold prospector, becoming orphans in a threatening environment. They leave with the body of their father, seeking the right place to bury him. The siblings are very different, Lucy seeks stability, security, a home, community, anonymity, wanting to learn, to be more than she is. These are never going to options that are open to her, it is constantly made clear her that they will never belong. Strange hypocrisy and ironic that these judgements and thinking comes from those who are themselves recent immigrants with a history of having stolen from and murdered indigenous communities. Lucy becomes aware of the power of writing, of documents and deeds, enabling the practice of legally stealing with impunity, of the legitimacy conferred by writing history, even if so much of it is untrue. Sam may well be a girl in terms of gender, but as far as she is concerned, she identifies as a boy, and she wants a different future than the one Lucy desires.

In a story of family, the history of the ravaged American West, adventure, where family history is posthumously written, fantastical symbolic tigers and buffalo roam free, Lucy and Sam begin together, only to separate, but are destined to come together again. Zhang writes the most exquisite of prose, in this unforgettable, beautifully imagined storytelling, with its magical realism elements, of the complexities of family, of the commonality of the immigrant experience, the conflicts, the place of the culture and traditions of the home they have left, the battle to survive, the need to weave a new sense of identity, issues surrounding gender, race, and the wall of hostility endured in the place that has now become home. This may well be historical fiction but Zhang's novel resonates with and speaks to us of our world as it is now, of how little has changed, of people driven by their fears and insecurities to blame immigrants for all their woes, ruthlessly exploited by populist politicians, ensuring that the immigrant experience remains a emotionally heartbreaking nightmare. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the published for this ARC.

I absolutely loved this book. It took me a little while to get into it, but by a few pages into the second part, I was hooked. The prose is beautiful, the story is completely unique and engaging and the characters leap off the page. This is a completely new way of looking at the mythology of the American West, and Zhang is pulling out a piece of history that has been underexplored. Heartbreaking, inspiring and thrilling in equal measure, this is one of my favourite reads for a long time.

Took me a while to click with the book and it's not a cheerful read but still a very good one. The story of immigrants in a strange land fighting for survival. Lucy and Sam are both very strong women but somehow some of the age old problems still haunt them, I wish I could have understood the Chinese phrases, maybe that was the point- to make me feel disconnected too. A very bitter sweet book and the ending too. I found myself wanting clarification. 
There are some formatting issues but they didn't detract too much to prevent me enjoying the book

There are so many themes in this book: identity, belonging, loss, home, loneliness. I’ve always been fascinated by the history of the gold rush, the building of the railways and the use of Chinese immigrants to complete this work. What does it mean to be displaced in a new and cruel land? How do you ever belong? Who can you trust? I am lucky enough to have lived a very settled life, but what happens if you have no roots? If you have no home and are not welcome wherever you go? To leave your history behind, knowing it counts for less than nothing? This book was quite unsettling to me because it raises so many questions, without necessarily providing answers. A very powerful and thought-provoking read. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this booK.

Lucy (12) and Sam (9) are newly orphaned children of oriental immigrants escaping from a mining town where their parents have failed to make their fortune during the mid 19th century gold rush in the western USA.    They carry with them the corpse of their father, Ba, looking for a burial site which would satisfy their eastern traditions. The narrative of their wandering is punctuated with description of the family back story, which provides the perspective necessary to understand the motivation and behaviour of the children. 

The  author blends Chinese symbolism and mythology with real events in the wild west.  If, like me, you are puzzled by references to tigers in the USA, it is because this is a reimagined history.  The tigers are not real and exist together with buffalos and other realities in  the author’s imagined world.

How Much of These Hill is Gold is not just an exceptionally good read, it is an experience that will not be quickly forgotten. The story telling and imagery are truly beautiful.  The novel explores the universal issues of racial discrimination, family tensions, sibling rivalry, hope, adversity and yearning for home in this particular and unusual setting.

I finished this book two days ago and yet certain images from it continue to haunt me: the buffalo bones, the dust, the tiger paw prints and mostly, the flecks of gold. It is these flecks of gold that drive many individuals and families from all over the globe to seek their fortune trying to find still in the aftermath of the American old rush. This fortune proves allusive and potentially destructive, leaving us to question what we should really hold to be valuable.  
Samantha and Lucy are siblings whose family came to America in search of this fortune and are trying to find out who they are in a world that is incredibly hostile. The non-linear narrative introduces the reader to the sisters once their father has died from grief and alcoholism, their mother having abandoned them unable to cope with the life of mining and prospecting. A life she was little aware she would be facing after having crossed the ocean. They are trying to bury their father the best way they know however come up against many obstacles not just in terms of the racist attitudes that prevail in the attitudes of those around them who claim ‘this is our land’ but also the brutality and unforgiving nature of the landscape. It chokes, it pushes and pulls. It is oblivious and uncaring to the toils of humanity.
The landscape dominates the novel as something that draws people to it and as something that is impossible to escape from. The heat and its oppressiveness offering very little that can sustain life seems also to be a metaphorical representation of the lives of the villagers who try to live off it. It seems everyone is a victim however it is the women of this novel who seem to be the ones who suffer the most greatly. Their bodies are beaten, bruised; either perpetually pregnant or there for the gratification of men however this is not a novel without hope. Both Sam and Lucy, in their different ways, seem to forge their own path. The novel is viscerally haunting. A novel about survival, identity and finding your own home within a world that is in constant turmoil and change. Truly remarkable.

An immigrant family, disappointed and broken, desperate and full of longing for better things are part of this wild country. Its cruelty and beauty are part of their story. The two siblings share a history full of tales of tigers and buffalo and, a distant country which is theirs, but not  theirs beckons,  but is also strange to them. Their future is also unknowable, as they undertake a journey together to bury their past and look for new ways to see themselves. They are as confused and changeable as the march of progress, which brings the railroad to the west, but can’t retrieve the old way of life and wilderness.
 Loneliness exists in the  faces of those condemned to be forever outsiders,  despite a place of birth connected to this land. The elusiveness of the  buffalo and tales of tigers speak of a lost connection with the wild. The journey is as much a search for that as it is a search for their place in the world.
This is a beautiful novel, the language wonderfully sparse and full of longing.for a lost innocence. I really recommend it and personally could jump straight back to the beginning and read it again.

I don't know how to start this review and I don't think I can summarise how I felt reading this story and how wonderful it is.
It's a great reading experience, one of those book you won't forget and would start to read again as soon as you can.
The great style of writing, the vivid background and the excellent cast of characters makes this book a wonderful reading experience.
It's also full of food for thought and questions. Topics like sibling rivalry, relationship, racial tensions can makes you think and look for an answer.
There's no answer in this book and you will search thinking about what you read.
Excellent and brilliant, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.