Two orphaned Chinese immigrant siblings flee the threats of their gold rush mining town across an unforgiving landscape where their survival is tested by family secrets, sibling rivalry and disparate goals. A first novel. - (Baker & Taylor)

A NEW YORK TIMES  NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

WINNER OF THE ROSENTHAL FAMILY FOUNDATION AWARD, FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS

A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Belongs on a shelf all of its own.” —NPR

“Outstanding.” —The Washington Post
 
“Revolutionary . . . A visionary addition to American literature.” —Star Tribune

An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home.

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.
- (Penguin Putnam)

Born in Beijing but mostly an artifact of the United States, C Pam Zhang has lived in thirteen cities across four countries and is still looking for home. She’s been awarded support from Tin House, Bread Loaf, Aspen Words, and elsewhere, and currently lives in San Francisco. - (Penguin Putnam)

Booklist Reviews

Beijing-born, globally-trotted, San Francisco-domiciled Zhang "is still looking for home," her author bio shouts. That search for home—uncertain, elusive, just-out-of-reach—looms throughout Zhang's mesmerizing debut novel in which a family of four (which should have been five) never quite arrives. Avoiding grounding details—geography remains generally unnamed, centuries are literally Xed out ("XX62," Part One begins)—Zhang reveals as much through deliberate elision as meticulous storytelling. Somewhere in the American West, the Gold Rush has waned, coal mining is stifling, assumed foreigners remain suspect. Already motherless for three-and-a-half-years, 12-year-old Lucy and 11-year-old Sam become orphans when their Ba dies. Their need to find a "home" for Ba's remains becomes an epic quest that both estranges and unites them. Traversing decades through four succinct parts—sibling flight in XX62, Ma's plans in XX59, Ba's origins in XX42 and beyond, surviving adulthood in XX67—Zhang, just 29, writes with precocious assurance as she confronts the inseparable connections between lies, liars, and secrets; the barriers of language; the impossible price of family bonds, and the everlasting longing to find home. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

A first-time novelist explores timely questions about home and belonging in a story set during the gold rush in a reimagined American West. Even now, when most of what used to be the Wild West has begun to look like everywhere else—a few big cities spread out among sprawling suburbs full of chain restaurants and strip malls, connected by interstate highways and digital networks—a mythic version of this part of the country endures alongside the reality. That there is a place where anyone can strike it rich or, failing that, at least live free is one of the stories Americans love to tell ourselves. Zhang plays with this duality in her brutally lyrical debut. Lucy and Sam's family left China for North America with the idea that their father, Ba, would become a prospector. The gold rush is over before they get there, though; he ends up mining coal instead. Sam's daydreams of being a cowboy exist alongside the naked racism his family endures, but the romantic wish to be an outlaw comes true when Lucy and Sam are forced to flee their small mining village after their father's death, taking his corpse with th em because they lack the means to give it the burial that will let his ghost rest. As they travel through desiccated landscapes littered with the bones of tigers and buffalo, Lucy and Sam meet archetypes we think we know from Westerns, but they are stripped of romance. The journey of these two children—and the backstories of their parents—force us to confront just how white the history we've been taught is. Aside from fictions—some fanciful inventions, some hateful lies—about Native Americans, we don't hear much about the experiences of people of color and immigrants in shaping the West. Zhang asks readers to acknowledge a legacy we have been taught to ignore by creating a new and spellbinding mythology of her own. Aesthetically arresting and a vital contribution to America's conversation about itself. Copyright Kirkus 2020 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

DEBUT With visceral directness, Zhang opens her first novel with two children waking in a mining camp in the late 1800s American West and finding their father dead. As narrated by older child Lucy, various details emerge, if not explicitly; these children are of Asian ancestry, and the younger child, Sam, identifies as a boy but is biologically a girl. Discriminated against and destitute, the siblings flee with the corpse on a stolen horse; their flight finally comes to an end when they can bury their father. The book then shifts to their parents' backstory, unfolding the family's origins, their gold-fueled success, and their downfall when they lose their mother. The story then jumps forward five years, with Sam off adventuring as a man and Lucy acting as a companion to a wealthy white woman. Once they reunite, they set off to cross back to Asia, and on the way Lucy pays for Sam's freedom with her own. But at what cost? VERDICT This moving tale of family, gold, and freedom rings with a truth that defies rosy preconceptions. The description of human and environmental degradation is balanced by shining characters who persevere greatly. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/7/19.]—Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Zhang's extraordinary debut, a beautifully rendered family saga, centers on a pair of siblings, Lucy, 12, and Sam, 11, who are left orphaned in the wake of the American gold rush. When their father—a former prospector and coal miner whom they call Ba—dies after a short, hard life of toil and drink, Lucy and Sam want to bury him properly, according to Chinese burial traditions. This means two silver dollars to cover his eyes, but it's two silver dollars the two don't have. Clever Lucy attempts to appeal to the townspeople's sympathy, but it's hotheaded Sam, armed with their father's pistol, who understands that it takes force to make things happen. With their father's decomposing body, the pistol, and a stolen horse, Lucy and Sam disappear into the hills. As they search for a burial site and look forward to a future for themselves, Lucy and Sam reckon with how gold, ambition, and desire shaped the lives of both their Ba and their beautiful, beloved, and long-departed Ma, whose womanhood never dampened her hunger and ambition, and how that greed has been passed down to them. Gorgeously written and fearlessly imagined, Zhang's awe-inspiring novel introduces two indelible characters whose odyssey is as good as the gold they seek. (Apr.)