How Much of These Hills Is Gold Paperback – 6 April 2021

A sense of belonging and a deep ache for home is something that resides in all our hearts. Set during the Californian Gold Rush, two Chinese-American siblings, Lucy and Sam find themselves running from their new temporary home after the death of their father, a miner and a gold prospector. With them, they carry some essentials, a stolen horse and the dead body of their father in a battered trunk.As these siblings travel through a dry and dreary land devoid of people and hopes, they encounter mysterious tiger paws and giant buffaloes, symbolic and fantastical. Lucy years for stability, a place to settle down and live a life she deserves, whereas Sam, who is a girl by gender but identifies herself as a boy, wants to wander and face the adventurous side of life.This historical fiction that is set somewhere in the 1840s is woven through memories of days gone by, the tumultuous present and a future that we are unaware of. The Chinese immigrant experience with its gritty edges, gives us a story that is unforgettable, engrossing and spellbinding. The author fills our heads with the irony that has been a part of our society since a long time and that is, it is the immigrants who decide whether another immigrant family is suitable for their community and subject them to unspeakable horrors if they decide otherwise. Lucy and Sam's memories of the past gives us a dysfunctional family divided by the need to make money and their present speaks volumes on hostility and bias. At the end, it's all about survival and Lucy and Sam through this journey together, apart and together again try to find their true identity.