the ballad of lucy whipple karen cushman

Karen Cushman's other books include Catherine, Called Birdy and The Midwife's Apprentice. Dispelling the idea that only men went there to seek their fortune, Cushman focuses on the women and families who created homes and towns from a harsh landscape. Newbery Award-winning author Karen Cushman paints a vivid picture of life in the gold fields.

The Ballad of Lucy Whipple is her firsthand account of her struggles in a rough and tumble land. With each day, the homesick Lucy is more and more determined to take life into her own hands and return to New England. There are no books, no school-nothing but dust and drunken miners. Reaching California, the Whipples set up a crude boardinghouse, and Lucy is put to work washing, cleaning, and baking pies in the rough mining town of Lucky Diggins. Moving is the last thing the outspoken twelve-year-old, Lucy, wants to do. (Aug.In the summer of 1849, Lucy Whipple's mother packs up her household and her two young children, and leaves their home in Massachusetts for the gold fields of California. The writing reflects her expert craftsmanship for example, Lucy's brother Butte, dead for lack of a doctor, is eulogized thus: ''He was eleven years old, could do his sums, and knew fifty words for liquor.'' A coming-of-age story rich with historical flavor.

Here she also renders serious social issues through sharply etched portraits: a runaway slave who has no name of his own, a preacher with a congregation of one, a raggedy child whose arms are covered in bruises. As in her previous books, Newbery Award winner Cushman (The Midwife's Apprentice) proves herself a master at establishing atmosphere. Over years of toil and hardship, Lucy realizes, somewhat predictably, that home is wherever she makes one. It’s the tale of family conflict, love, and adjusting to foreign surroundings, not in another country, but on the other side of this one. California rebels by renaming herself Lucy and by hoarding the gold dust and money she earns baking dried apple and vinegar pies, saving up for a journey home. Another excellent YA book by Karen Cushman, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple takes us to another time period, far from the Middle Ages of her previous books. Her mother, a restless widow with an acid tongue, has uprooted her children from their home in Massachusetts to make a new life in Lucky Diggins. In a voice so heartbreakingly bitter that readers can taste her homesickness, California Morning Whipple describes her family's six-year stay in a small mining town during the Gold Rush.

The ballad of lucy whipple karen cushman