Items related to Gold Mountain
It's 1884 in the town of Gold Mountain and the Snoqualmie Valley, thirty miles east of Seattle and a world away. The virtual king of the valley is Nils Bengston, a young Swedish-American who owns half of the businesses and land, including the largest hop ranch in the world, supplying crops to the breweries of England. Or at least he will own it, if his luck holds out and the banks get paid. Into this growing empire rides Katherine Duncan, the diminutive new schoolteacher, barely an adult herself but fiercely determined to escape the poverty of her childhood and establish a respectable place in the world. It is Nils who has hired her to teach the children of the valley -- yet Nils despises school and schoolteachers, and will tolerate her lessons only until she gets in his way. Then there's Carl White, a law student in Seattle and the son of the riverboat captain who brought Katherine to the valley. He wants to take Katherine back to Seattle to marry him, as she has promised to do. So, why does her commitment to her school keep delaying that day? Based on true tales of Snoqualmie Valley pioneers, "Gold Mountain" evokes a land where the stakes are high, lives are made and unmade, and love is the greatest lesson of all. ///////////////////// Charlotte Paul (1916-1989) led a life marked by the pursuit of numerous careers -- news editor, wife, back-to-the-lander, freelance writer, mother, novelist, memoirist, parole board official -- and usually several of these at once. In the 1950s, she and her husband ran a small weekly newspaper in Washington state's remote Snoqualmie Valley, where she collected from old-timers the tales of the valley's pioneers. These tales she wove into two of her bestselling novels, "Gold Mountain" and "The Cup of Strength," later renamed "Wild Valley."
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SAMPLE She heard the whing of the stone, felt the horse jerk back, gather his strength, then wildly plunge forward. She was out of the saddle, grabbing for the horn, missing it. The big bay, crazy with shock, bucked again. Too stricken to cry out, Katherine went over the side. But her foot, one foot, caught in the stirrup. The horse pounded ahead, free, or almost free. Katherine followed, bouncing like an Indian travois through the dirt. She didn't think for a moment about the hooves. "My skirt!" she sobbed out loud, fighting to hold down her petticoats. Someone grabbed the reins, and the horse stopped abruptly. Carl's frightened voice said, "Katherine, Katherine, are you all right?" A hundred people were standing in a circle around her. One of them, an old Indian in a logger's shirt and nothing else, was holding her hat and grinning appreciatively. The hat was mashed and torn. Carl was beside her, lifting her to her feet, supporting her with a strong arm. "I'm all right," she said. It was obvious that they all knew who she was. "Really, I'm perfectly all right!" she repeated, a little irritably because it was so clearly untrue. Frantically, her hands worked at straightening her skirts. No use trying to arrange her hair. Every pin that held it in a grown-up knot at the top of her head was gone; the hair hung loosely down her back. A man laughed. it was a deep, confident, amused sort of laugh. A man wouldn't laugh like that if he were the kind to wonder what he'd do should the same thing happen to him. A laugh with power, with . . . conceit behind it. Katherine wheeled around angrily. He was standing only a few feet away, thumbs hooked easily in the edges of his trouser pockets. He was big, very big. His blond head, held erect with such easy pride, was inches above those of the tallest. Sun had burned the hair to straw color, made the skin as dark as an Indian's. His eyes were blue -- and amused. She lifted her chin. It had seemed like the end of the world to be dragged into camp at the end of a stirrup, but anger was healing the wounds of embarrassment. She would like to have ignored him. But his bodily presence was too overwhelming. He compelled her, by his very bigness, to look at him. "One of the Greene boys," the big man said good-humoredly, pointing to the boy who had hit her horse. But he talked to Carl, not to her. Katherine thought, he sees no reason to explain anything to a woman. "Those Greenes'll have hell filled up by the time the rest of us are ready to go in." He laughed. He was looking at Carl. But his eyes pulled her into the area of his glance, held her there. Carl's polite voice seemed to break across a heavy current. "Miss Duncan, may I present . . ." The big man stopped him with a wave of the hand. "I know who she is." "Hasn't it occurred to you, Nils," Carl said coldly, "that the lady might not know you?" Katherine felt the antagonism curling behind Carl's words. It was there, too, in the brown face of the man named Nils. But again, the strength belonged to the man who didn't care. Nils laughed. What a silly idea, the laugh said. Everyone here knows who I am, and who cares about a skinny little schoolteacher? Carefully, Carl took Katherine's arm. Katherine hesitated. What notion held her here, aching to say more to this blond giant? "Would you have laughed if that horse had killed me?" For the first time, he looked straight down into her face. He shook his head. "No," he said deliberately, "I would have buried you." Katherine was trembling all over. "Still laughing, I suppose?" He grinned. "No, I would have felt real sad." He chuckled. "If you'd been pretty." ///////////////////////////////////////////////// BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PAUL PHOENIX ISLAND. One lonely island, one tidal wave, nine survivors . . . Part techno-thriller, part romance, part wilderness survival story, part utopian novel, this most popular novel of Charlotte's sold over a million copies in the late 1970s and 1980s. SEATTLE. Epic tale of a Scandinavian family, their struggles, and their loves, in historic Seattle. Charlotte's last novel. GOLD MOUNTAIN. Pride and passion on the frontier of Washington state in the 1880s. Based on true stories of pioneers in the Snoqualmie Valley. WILD VALLEY (originally THE CUP OF STRENGTH). A follow-up to GOLD MOUNTAIN, with new faces and old, based on more true stories of Snoqualmie Valley pioneers. HEAR MY HEART SPEAK. An inspiring story of redemption for a young veteran suffering the emotional scars of war. Charlotte's first novel. A CHILD IS MISSING. A thriller inspired by and building on the Lindbergh kidnapping. THE EYE. A supernatural thriller about the memory that comes with an eye implant. MINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS. Charlotte's lighthearted memoir of rural newspaper ownership in Washington state's Snoqualmie Valley in the 1950s. AND FOUR TO GROW. Charlotte's less lighthearted but equally candid sequel to MINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS.
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- PublisherAce
- Publication date1980
- ISBN 10 0441297498
- ISBN 13 9780441297498
- BindingMass Market Paperback
- Rating
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