The Prospectors
When Alice Bush’s sister and brother-in-law strike gold in the Klondike, becoming celebrated and indescribably wealthy, she joins them in the Yukon as cook and companion, hoping to pin her star to theirs and become something other than the plain, middle daughter of a failed California fruit farmer. But Alice isn’t the only one hoping to rise with their success. Working on the claim are two with similar aspirations—Jim, a shrewd Tlingit man, and his beautiful sister Jane. A theft, a lie, and a tragedy cast a black cloud over the family’s fortune and haunt Alice as she returns to California. In the present-day, Alice’s great-great granddaughter Anna travels to the Yukon on her elderly grandfather’s behalf. He wants to make reparations to Jane’s descendants, for what he believes was mistreatment by his white ancestors, with a generous bequest. But carrying out his wishes is not as simple, especially when the rest of her large family hears about this division of their inheritance and descends on the Yukon in a modern-day “gold rush.”
Ariel Djanikian has written an intriguing and needed take on the Gold Rush novel, one based on her own family history as a descendant of the real Alice Bush. In Djanikian’s able hands, Alice’s story is not just one of American wealth built from hard work and daring, as are many set during the Gold Rush, but one of white wealth stolen from Native land on the backs of exploited Native labor. Djanikian grapples with moral arguments about land, resources, labor, and capitalism and manages to do so without weighing down her rich and well-written narrative. The Prospectors glows with immersive prose, complex characters, and an evocative setting. Recommended.
