But Lucy California Morning Whipple may be in for a surprise - because home is a lot closer than she thinks. Worst of all, there's no lending library Dag diggety So Lucy vows to be plain miserable until she can hightail it back East where she belongs. Even the gold her mama claimed was just lying around in the fields isn't panning out. For Lucy, Lucky Diggins is hardly a town at all - just a bunch of ramshackle tents and tobacco-spitting miners. And now her brother, Butte, and sisters, Prairie and Sierra, seem to be Westerners at heart, too. But moving out West to Lucky Diggins, California, was her mama's dream-come-true. I know you will understand.California doesn't suit Lucy Whipple - not the name, not the place.
I cannot hate California and be California. (Aug.Dear Gram and Grampop, Please do not address yours truly as California anymore, California Morning Whipple being a foolish name for a duck much less a girl. The writing reflects her expert craftsmanship for example, Lucy's brother Butte, dead for lack of a doctor, is eulogized thus: ""He was eleven years old, could do his sums, and knew fifty words for liquor."" A coming-of-age story rich with historical flavor.
Here she also renders serious social issues through sharply etched portraits: a runaway slave who has no name of his own, a preacher with a congregation of one, a raggedy child whose arms are covered in bruises. As in her previous books, Newbery Award winner Cushman (The Midwife's Apprentice) proves herself a master at establishing atmosphere. Over years of toil and hardship, Lucy realizes, somewhat predictably, that home is wherever she makes one. California rebels by renaming herself Lucy and by hoarding the gold dust and money she earns baking dried apple and vinegar pies, saving up for a journey home. Her mother, a restless widow with an acid tongue, has uprooted her children from their home in Massachusetts to make a new life in Lucky Diggins. In a voice so heartbreakingly bitter that readers can taste her homesickness, California Morning Whipple describes her family's six-year stay in a small mining town during the Gold Rush.
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