Child in the Valley
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Seventeen-year-old Joshua Gaines is the orphaned foster son of a failed doctor on the run from his father’s debt. In 1849, he travels to Independence, Missouri and falls in with the mysterious, four-fingered Renard, and his companion, formerly-enslaved Free Ray. Joshua offers his medical expertise to their party, and together they embark on the fifteen-hundred mile overland journey to Gold Rush California.
Following the hardship, disease, and death on the trail, the company abandons panning the river in favor of robbery and murder. Engulfed by violence, the young doctor-turned-marauder must reckon with his own morality, his growing desire for the men around him, and the brutality that has haunted him all his life.
For fans of The Revenantand Ian McGuire’s The North Water, Child in the Valley is a gorgeously rendered tale cut from the turmoil of a fledgling America. Gordy Sauer’s careful eye and penetrating literary lens offers a modern, incisive look into the complexities of masculinity, isolation, and the impenetrable nature of greed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sauer debuts with a riveting cautionary tale of greed set during the California gold rush. A baby boy is orphaned at birth in 1832 St. Louis, then adopted by the doctor who delivered him, Dr. Gaines, and named Joshua. As Joshua grows, his adopted father trains him in the medical arts, and then, in 1849, after Gaines dies and his house is sold to pay off debt, Joshua leaves St. Louis, hoping to gain a spot as a doctor on an expedition to Sacramento Valley, where he plans to strike it rich and erase the memory of Gaines's financial failures. He is invited to join the mysterious Renard and his traveling companions: Englishman G. Quillard, the formerly enslaved Free Ray, and twins Clayton and Klayton. As the motley gang of forty-niners reach their destination, they abandon all pretense of humanity and begin to steal from and kill others in their single-minded pursuit of gold. Caught in this nightmare, Joshua examines his own descent into depravity and aims to redeem himself. While the prose's biblical intonations can feel a bit mannered, Sauer's imagistic style credibly affects an apocalyptic tone while describing the desolate landscape. This is an accomplished literary western.
