A story of the Klondike Gold Rush, The Prospectors uses real people (the author's relatives) for some of the jumping off places into the fiction of her tale.

This is a two-tales woven together presentation - the origin of the problematic circumstances arising out of the rush to dig gold 1897 thru 1904 by the Berry and Bush families, to their generations forward in 2015 trying to give back some of the wealth created by that original gold to the First Nations people.

Although this is one of my interest areas - I have family in Juneau and Anchorage - it was not a sticky read for me. I found no one character whose choices I could get into, or even really relate to, so it was reading at arms' length. Yet there's a bravery in beginning uncomfortable conversations, and that is definitely here.

*A sincere thank you to Ariel Djanikian, William Morrow, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.*

Ninety-three year old Peter Bailey had only known wealth. “Wealth, he believed, was simply something that happened to him.” His wealth had been built upon the journey of his ancestors to the Klondike and their back-breaking mining for gold in the late 19th century. Intent upon righting a wrong, Peter enlisted the assistance of his great, great granddaughter Anna and her husband. They would be dispatched to Dawson City in Yukon Territory to provide recompense to the descendants of Tlingit siblings Jim and Jane. In a dual timeline, the story of the Klondike Gold Rush and the rippling effect one hundred and fifty years later is told. "Tens of thousands of prospectors charg[ed] into the Canadian North to try their luck in what was…a blatant and unrepentant pillaging mission.”

In 1896, Clarence Berry left a dried-out fruit farm in California. It was rumored that gold might be found in the North. “Clarence…obtained claims on a lucky creek, hit a prosperous vein, and became widely known as the King of the Klondike.” In 1896, Ethel Bush had been a farm girl. “She had condescended to marry a destitute farmer…Clarence Berry…She was the first white woman to go to the Klondike…the perfect image of a pioneer woman: cheerful, resourceful…tough-as-nails… A signed deed indicated the location and coordinates of a small fraction of land along the creek bearing Ethel’s name….It read of money.”

After fifteen months, Clarence and Ethel triumphantly returned home to California. “The mud of the North still stuck to their clothes. They hauled chunks of gold in rolled-up blankets…they had nuggets inside of emptied tins, in old leather boots topped with a sock…”. It was no wonder that Moie and Poie finally would allow Ethel’s younger sister, Alice Bush, to travel to the Yukon as Ethel’s companion.

After wintering in California, prospectors were off to the Klondike replete with fur robes and sacks of food stuffs to last the mining season. The Berry-Bush travelers were aided in their quest by Clarence’s Tlingit packer Jim. Alice’s mistrust of Jim was immediate, as soon as they arrived at Dyea inlet and prepared for their journey on foot to the goldfields. Approaching the Chilkoot Pass, the sun beating on the snow, Jim forewarned the party of avalanche conditions.. By ignoring Alice’s insistence to continue traveling that day, Clarence insisted on following Jim’s advice and their lives were spared. Others were not so lucky. Alice’s dislike for Jim’s sister Jane, created a hostile environment in the Berry household, Jane’s place of employment.

As more gold was unearthed by Clarence, the family dynamic deteriorated as he became distrustful and suspicious of others especially when some bags of gold disappeared along with a pouch of small nuggets hand picked by Ethel. Dishonesty and subterfuge… finger pointing and worse.

Although “The Prospectors” was written in dual timelines of 1897-1904 and 2015, details of the Yukon Gold Rush 1897-1904, encompassed the majority of the story, a demonstration of how wealth might alter one’s moral compass. The present day sequence seemed lacking to this reader. This historical fiction read was a wonderful snapshot of the tales Peter Bailey shared with his granddaughter, Ariel Djanikian, the book’s author. “Klondike” and “Yukon”...[have] the romantic aura that still clings to them today…”.

Thank you William Morrow and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was very interesting and thought provoking. I had a hard time with the ending and with one of the characters but otherwise it was a great book. Worth reading for sure.

I found myself completely swept away with this story. As an audio, this narrator was just wonderful and pulled me right into the story.

It's a dual timeline and I appreciated both. One, a great great granddaughter is trying to fulfill a grandfather's dying wish. In another, a young family is trying to strike it big in Alaska during the gold rush and then, eventually, oil. As with any big windfall of money, this family in Alaska encounters sickness, greed, envy and deceit.

I loved learning about this family. The note at the end that this is based on the author's real family was such a nice treat. I agree with others that said they wished they'd known in the beginning. It would have added such an interesting element, but adding it at the end worked too!

Such a fascinating story about survival, adventure, and taking a chance. I loved it!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

What can make humans act inhumanly, and treat others like they're less than human? Greed. Throughout history, people have done each other dirty for precious resources like gold and oil. In The Prospectors, Ariel Djanikian weaves a tale of adventure and ambition, which was inspired by the experiences of her own family.

While I have read several other stories involving Native people being mistreated for their natural resources, the Klondike Gold Rush was an entirely new topic for me, so that was interesting to learn about. The reader will develop a love/hate relationship with some of the characters, as you get invested in them, and watch them make terrible choices. There were parts of the story abundant with adventure, and parts that moved a bit slowly. Normally, I love a dual-timeline story, but in this book, it wasn't as well-executed as I would have liked.

I'm split on this one and it's because I felt so differently about the two timelines in the story. The largest chunk of the story takes place in the late 1890's way up in Western Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush and follows one family in their pursuit of wealth from mining gold. There is another chunk of the story that is set in present-day times featuring the same family that shows how they all deal with the legacy of their family's wealth and position.

I inhaled the Gold Rush chapters. The first person in the family discovers gold, and then one by one the rest of the family jumps on board with the mining in various ways. I loved watching the family start to have some hope and purpose after a string of setbacks, and it was nice to see them rise socially. There is a ton of greed and betrayal though, and once it rears its head, it really never lets up. I enjoyed the rise of the drama and watching it all unfold. It was interesting to try to put myself into the heads of these people. More than anything, I loved watching how this family adapted to traveling over the land back during the 1890's and how they adapted to living in the harsher climates and conditions up in the mining camps. The adaptation of people to their circumstances throughout different periods of history is my favorite part of historical fiction, and this really checked those boxes for me.

The present-day chapters were a slog for me. First of all, I don't think they were needed. Or at least, I don't feel like they progressed the story at all. I understand that this is the author's story to tell, and as it was about real humans that lived before us (and they were her family!), she probably had a reason for including both time POVs. But I did not enjoy the greed and betrayal in THIS part of the story one bit. There are a lot of layers to this greed and betrayal, and I don't think the resolution was worth the slog to get there. Unfortunately, THIS portion of the story is what pops into my head first when I think about this book.

So, for these two completely different feelings about the two portions of this book, I had to adjust my rating. The present-day ending overshadowed the very best part of this story, and it was what I was left with when I finished the book.

Many thanks to William Morrow for sending me a copy of this book for review via NetGalley. These thoughts are completely my own!

The Prospectors is the first story I’ve read by Djanikian and was pleasantly surprised. The story is told in the past and present in the days of the Yukon Gold Rush. I would have liked this more if the story had been solely told in the past. The parts jumping to the present slowed down the flow. Overall a fascinating story with well-developed characters and complex plot.

ARC was provided by NetGalley and William Morrow in exchange for an honest review.

I really, really wanted to love this. It checks so many of my Reader boxes...but man it just took a turn! I'm pleased it reached a lot of readers thanks to the TV book club, but it wasn't my favorite.

Absolutely loved this! I knew very little about the Alaskan Gold Rush going in and am now obsessed with learning more. The writing style was good, I connected with the characters, and what an amazing story. I did feel some things / parts of the timeline were rushed and/or glossed over too quickly - this book could have easily been 100+ more pages. I think some details were lost in editing. I wanted a little more on the harsh living conditions and just how they managed to survive such conditions - but maybe that's more for a nonfiction book about the Klondike Gold Rush and not this novel? Initially, I didn't like a few of the characters, but they were well developed and I think probably appropriate behaviors / choices for the time. Overall though, highly recommend. I've discussed this book so many times in the weeks since I finished it and purchased it twice as a gift - it would be a great Book Club pick!

A first rate book! Long but wonderful. The author perfectly captured the huge crush of white people pushing their way onto land that didn't belong to them, staking literal claims, mining the riches for themselves and displacing whole tribes, very few miners giving little to no thought to the ethics of what they were doing. I loved that several key characters battled these feelings throughout the novel and were still evident over one hundred twenty years later by descendants of the Gold Rush miners and natives.

Yukon Gold Rush? Family drama? Moral questions about wealth and responsibility and manifest destiny? Sign me up!

The adventure elements of this story were spot-on, and many of the complex dynamics wrapped up in both the Bush and Berry families were compelling. Amid the wealth that the central family came into, siblings and parents and children find they can no longer fully trust one another, have to tread carefully in their words and in the arrangements they agree to.

There are also interesting passages regarding personal responsibility of the individual success stories that emerge — are those that strike it rich responsible for providing a strong moral example, and taking others under their wing? Or must they be even tougher and stingier than others, so they aren’t taken advantage of? How much of their lives are they obliged to share with the curious and the striving?

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. Personally, though, I didn’t love the intermingling of the present-day POV throughout the story — it felt like it took away from the momentum of the past-tense POV, which comprised the bulk of the story, and didn’t add anything to my understanding of it at the time. The attempt at reparations does add another layer, but might have felt more natural to be condensed as a closing or an epilogue. But frankly, there wasn’t all that much of the present-day POV, so it was just an occasional blip on my radar rather than a central component that continued to gnaw away at me. If it bugs you too, keep going, it felt like it came together nicely in the end!

I will also give the heads-up — it’s unsurprising given the subject matter, but — there is quite a lot of conversation around the issues of discrimination, displacement, and racial resentment during this period and continuing into today. I think the author did well in terms of providing a view into a variety of different forms of discrimination: some characters flat-out didn’t trust the Indigenous population, some patronized them, and some in the present-day narrative, arguably, went too far and assumed too much in their efforts to be sensitive to the past. However, I did feel that all of these interwoven viewpoints and challenges were very much “told” to the reader, rather than “shown,” and felt a bit forced or stilted.

All in all, had a couple hang-ups but it was a solid read about a historical period that you don’t see too often around here on Booksta. Would recommend giving it a try!

Thanks to the author, William Morrow, and NetGalley for my gifted copy. The Prospectors is available now!

A big family saga that's largely focused on the Klondike gold rush. This starts in the present, and moves back and forth to it periodically, but the present story- when one of the descendants of the original characters wants to give a financial gift to other descendants. The weakest part of the novel, this present day story is confusing at times (keeping straight who's who) and, to be honest, irrelevant. Stick with the 1890s - when Clarence and Ethel hit it big with gold and then bring Alice, Ethel's sister, up with them to help Ethel, who is ill. Clarence's brothers Frederick and Henry are also along for the ride as is Jim, their indigenous guide and his sister Jane, who's got a secret. Jane is key to much of what happens but she remains a bit of a cipher. It's Alice who has the loudest voice and she's also got a secret. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. This bogs down periodically but once you're committed to Alice and Ethel, you're in for a good read.

The “Prospectors” by Ariel Djanikian was a fascinating adventure based on the author’s own family history. It is the story of what took place during the Alaska Yukon Gold Rush. The story involves two families whose struggle for adventure leads to great wealth at incredible odds. Its characters are well developed, and the strength of the two main characters who are women is inspiring. We are bounced back and forth from the late 1800s to present day. We learn how the greed that came from this wealth, precedes the injustice to the native people which comes full circle to affect the current generation. This a powerful and thought provoking book that was impossible to put down.

Thank you NetGalley, William Morrow, and the author for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

One of the best books I have read this year! I have never read anything that relates to this area of the country and time during the Gold Rush before. It was very eye opening!

"The Prospectors" by Ariel Djanikian is a sweeping and immersive tale that spans generations, delving into the complexities of family, ambition, and the pursuit of wealth against the backdrop of the Klondike Gold Rush and the oilfields of California. Djanikian weaves together two parallel narratives, one set during the Gold Rush era and the other in the present day, creating a rich tapestry of characters and events that explore the far-reaching consequences of greed and ambition.

The story follows Alice Bush, a middle daughter of struggling fruit farmers in California, who seizes the opportunity to change her destiny when her sister strikes gold in the Klondike Territory. Alice's journey from destitution to newfound wealth is captivating, and her transformation from a quiet observer to a determined opportunist is skillfully portrayed. The historical settings of the Klondike and early 20th-century California come to life through the author's vivid descriptions and attention to detail.

Interwoven with Alice's story is that of her great-great-granddaughter, Anna, in 2015. Anna's journey to the Klondike to confront her family's legacy and its impact on First Nations peoples adds a layer of moral complexity and reflection on the consequences of the past. The dual narrative structure allows for a thought-provoking exploration of the echoes of history across generations.

Djanikian's prose is both evocative and eloquent, drawing readers into the heart of the story and immersing them in the struggles and triumphs of the characters. The themes of justice, morality, and the cost of progress are beautifully woven throughout the narrative, prompting readers to reflect on the connections between the past and present.

"The Prospectors" is a powerful and ambitious work that combines historical fiction with contemporary relevance. The characters are well-developed and engaging, and the intricate plotting keeps the reader invested in the outcome of both storylines. With its rich historical detail and exploration of the complexities of human ambition, this novel offers a compelling and thought-provoking reading experience.

“Told in glimmering prose and rich with historical detail, The Prospectors immerses us in the Yukon Gold Rush so deeply, you can feel the grit on your hands.”—Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts