The Ballad of Lucy Whipple

So often when we think of the Gold Rush of California, what comes to mind is a crusty old Yosemite Sam type of character. In The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, Newbery Award winning author Karen Cushman gives us a different perspective. In this realistic, poignant, but often funny historical fiction novel-a young California Morning Whipple is dragged by her widowed mother away from her beloved Massachusetts to help set up a boarding house in Lucky Diggins, California. She absolutely detests the rough and tumble town and changes her name from California Morning to a more refined Lucy. This story is told in the first person (and sometimes in letters) and has a lot of interesting details about what life might have been like for women and children during the Gold Rush times.
Barbara-Elementary School Reading Teacher.