National Network for Equitable Library Service

In this sequel to the best-selling novel When Eagles Call, two Hawaiian labourers—Kimo Kanui and his friend Moku—end their contract with the Hudson's Bay Company in Fort Langley and trek north to join the great Cariboo gold rush of the early 1860s. Along with a black man from the Carolinas and a native Sto:lo woman won and freed in a card game, they face dangers and challenges along the trail as winter sets in. Gun-toting Californians, drunken miners, hostile natives as well as characters from British Columbia's history—James Douglas, Judge Begbie, Ovid Allard and Cataline—stride through the novel. River of Gold takes the reader on a journey through B.C.'s tumultuous history as the Hudson's Bay rule over New Caledonia ends and the province of British Columbia begins. It's a story of war and peace, of greed, of friendship and hatred, and of a man and a woman of different cultures learning to love again. It is a story of the Cariboo, that great leveller, where a person's mettle counted more than purse or pedigree, where strong men and women from all corners of the globe came together to forge a new and different society for British Columbians.