How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021
 
America. In the twilight of the Gold Rush, two siblings cross a landscape with a gun in their hands and the body of their father on their backs . . . 

Ba dies in the night, Ma is already gone. Lucy and Sam, twelve and eleven, are suddenly alone and on the run. With their father’s body on their backs, they roam an unforgiving landscape dotted with giant buffalo bones and tiger paw prints, searching for a place to give him a proper burial.

How Much of These Hills is Gold is a sweeping adventure tale, an unforgettable sibling story and a remarkable novel about a family bound and divided by its memories.
 
Erica says: '1950s, California Gold Rush. Two siblings must make their way as young Chinese Americans born and raised in the hills of the Wild West. This incredibly beautiful novel provokes questions about gender, belonging, and agency, staying with you long after.' (Representation: genderqueer secondary character.)
 
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‘The boldest debut of the year . . . It is refreshing to discover a new author of such grand scale, singular focus and blistering vision’ - Observer

‘The 19th-century American West is the setting for C Pam Zhang’s impressive debut. Rickety wagons, gambling dens, dusty towns and dodgy outlaws stalk its pages . . . How Much of These Hills is Gold breaks the mould [as a] revisionist immigrant fable of the making of the West . . . a daring and haunting epic’ - Sunday Times 
 
'Chinese-Americans - both native-born and immigrant - played a huge part in the settling of the American West, a fact that has too rarely been the subject of fiction. How Much of These Hills Is Gold, a debut novel by C Pam Zhang, is a tough-minded, skillful and powerful corrective to that omission . . . [It's] an aching book, full of myths of Zhang's making . . . as well as joys, as well as sorrows. It's violent and surprising and musical . . . By journey's end, you're enriched and enlightened by the lives you have witnessed ― New York Times Book Review

‘A truly gifted writer’ - Sebastian Barry

‘Pure gold’ - Emma Donoghue, Booker-shortlisted author of Room

‘Dazzling’ - Daisy Johnson, Booker-shortlisted author of Everything Under