DEAR AMERICA: Gold Rush

Tonight's DA selection was written by Kristiana Gregory, who contributed four titles to the series, three Royal Diaries, and Hope's My America trilogy.

The book was good, but a bit unrealistic. The girls are journeying to Oregon, their mother dies in an accident during the long ship voyage, and upon arriving in San Francisco, their doctor father develops gold fever.

The unrealistic part is that he leaves both girls for at least a month to fend for themselves and neither one of them gets raped, abducted or killed. There are many violent episodes in the book, but the fact that so many men in the area knew the girls were alone in their cabin and did nothing just makes the story ring untrue.

I read this pretty quickly, because while it was well-written aside from that one highly unrealistic part, I'm not very interested in how teenage girls lived their lives in a mining camp.

Still better than another book about the Oregon Trail though!