MMGM: Gold Rush Girl, by Avi

Here's the thing. I have six--yes, really six--feisty daughters. So I love feisty, spunky heroines, really I do. (I wrote a whole blog post about them, in fact, three daughters ago.) I love surrounding my daughters with stories of young women facing with courage and resilience the obstacles life puts in their path. Sometimes, though, the spunk can be taken too far.

It is possible for a writer to create a heroine so spunky that she crosses over that invisible line into "I just can't buy this" territory. And for the first 2/3 of Avi's newly-released Gold Rush Girl, his main character is just that kind of spunky. Annoyingly, unbelievably spunky. Fourteen-year-old Victoria "Tory" Blaisdell, despite being brought up by a submissive mother and domineering aunt, has no qualms about standing up for herself and taking life by the horns. Tory talks back to her aunt and parents, gets a job without their permission, sneaks out to further her education, and finally stows away on a ship to San Francisco so she can join her father and brother in their quest for fortune during the San Francisco Gold Rush of '49. And somehow, even though her father keeps pushing her back into "care for the house and your brother" duties, she gets away with it all. She never gets punished, or even reprimanded harshly, so she just goes on defying parental orders and good advice and doing whatever she wants. Perhaps there were some girls like this in the mid-nineteenth century, but I just couldn't buy it.

Because the plot and setting were completely fascinating (apparently Gold Rush-era San Francisco was crazy), I kept reading despite finding Tory very hard to relate to in the first half of the book. And while I don't think writing a female character is by any means outside of the scope of a male writer, it bothered me that a male author seemed so bent on making his female character strong and male characters weak. It almost felt manipulative, as though he were trying to buy the hearts of female readers by saying, "We all know girls are much stronger and smarter and wiser than boys," like Peter Pan cajoling Wendy to come to Neverland with him.

But then... the story shifted. A little past the midpoint, Tory's extreme spunkiness gets her in huge trouble. And she knows it. She owns up to the chaos she's caused, the way her feistiness actually risked the lives of others. She's haunted by her faults, realizing that her weaknesses had been masquerading as strength.

While the conclusion of the book brought a resurgence of spunk that I could have done without, I still found that the overall character change justified the less-than-identifiable character at the beginning. And I found myself impressed with Avi's writing skill; it takes a really good writer to keep me reading despite disliking the main character, and an excellent writer to bring about this kind of change in a believable manner.

So if you love reading about feisty girls, reading Gold Rush Girl is an obvious choice. But even if you don't, give it a try for the setting and plot--perhaps you'll find this particular feisty girl is more likable than you'd have thought.

If you click on the image above or this link, you can order Gold Rush Girl from your local indie bookstore (and I'll get a tiny commission of the sale). Please, please support your small local businesses during this time!!

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this e-ARC to review!

And while I forgot to email in time to link up this week, check out other middle grade reviews for Marvelous Middle Grade Monday on Greg's blog.