Walk the Earth a Stranger
The Gold Seer trilogy, Book 1
Rae Carson
Greenwillow Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Leah Westfall has worked her whole life helping her parents on their Georgia land claim, her ability to sense gold helping them scrape a living even as the local mines run dry. Word of a strike in California has many in town buzzing, but Leah has no plans to follow... until her parents are murdered, their stash stolen, and a greedy uncle takes over the land. He knows her secret, and has "plans" for her - plans she wants no part of, especially not when she realizes he pulled the trigger. Dressing as a boy, she heads out after a friend who set off for the Californian gold fields. It's a harrowing journey by land and river... and, though she'll be crossing the whole continent, she may not be running far enough to escape Uncle Hiram's reach.
REVIEW: Walk the Earth a Stranger, start of a trilogy, establishes a strong yet imperfect heroine in an era of both promise and despair, the decade before the Civil War; though her family doesn't keep slaves, she's surrounded by those who think nothing of owning a human being, reinforcing an underlying theme about personal freedoms and how far one must go to secure them. Carson brings the long journey to life with many details, some of them unpleasant, yet part of the pioneer experience. Leah (who travels as "Lee" for much of the book) faces all manner of challenges, but persists, even as she struggles to keep her gold sense hidden. It's a minor enough quirk that it almost could've been written out of the book with little change, though her abilities do come into play at a few key points. Through the whole journey, Leah learns how to trust, finding family and friends where she least expects them. It's a decent tale, occasionally unpredictable, and the characters are real enough to care about, if not always particularly deep. The ending feels a little flat and rushed, though; part of me wonders if this wasn't originally intended to be a standalone, and the conclusion had to be rewritten to accommodate sequels. Even if it's not a 24-karat story, Walk the Earth a Stranger has a nice glitter about it, making for a good read.
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