How Much of These Hills Is Gold

Set against the declining years of the American Gold Rush, the novel follows Lucy and Sam, two orphaned siblings of Chinese descent, as they carry their father’s decomposing body across a harsh western landscape. Carrying a trunk of stolen gold and seeking a proper burial site marked by tiger paws, the pair navigates a territory that denies their belonging. The narrative tracks their physical survival and evolving gender identities, detailing their encounters with environmental exhaustion, racial violence, and the myths used to justify westward expansion and land ownership.

Readers of revisionist westerns and immigrant histories will find this an examination of how national legacies are constructed through exclusion. It appeals to those interested in the tension between biological family ties and individual self-invention. The reader walks away with a concrete understanding of how the myth of the American frontier was built upon labor and lives often erased from historical records. It provides a stark look at the environmental cost of the gold fever and the psychological weight of searching for a home in a country that treats your presence as a trespass.