Advance copy. ( )

Although one would assume the setting for "Letters from the Corrugated Castle: A Novel of Gold Rush California 1850-1852" was the gold diggings, very little of the action in this story actually occurred at the mines. Perhaps more interestingly, this historical fiction novel allows readers to discover the effect the Gold Rush was having on other locations in California, especially San Francisco and the Salinas Valley. Author Joan W. Blos tells the story of thirteen year-old Eldora and her experiences in California entirely through letters that she herself writes, letters of others to Eldora, or fictional newspaper articles. And Eldora has a lot to write about! She has recently discovered that she is not an orphan and she has made the decision to leave her adoptive parents and their metal house ("corrugated castle") in San Francisco and move to her mother's house in the Salinas Valley. The descriptions of San Francisco and how its residents were trying to thrive (or merely survive) during those turbulent times should be very interesting for students who like a bit of fiction with their facts. For readers who enjoyed Blos's other books "A Gathering of Days" and "Brothers of the Heart", there is some overlapping of characters. ( )

This book, while doing a good job of informing the reader about life during the gold rush, especially for children, is very slow-moving, introspective and at times dull. I almost couldn't finish it. ( )

A series of letters and newspaper articles reveals life in California in the 1850s, especially for thirteen-year-old Eldora, who was raised in Massachusetts as an orphan only to meet her influential mother in San Francisco, and Luke, who hopes to find a fortune in gold.