A Railroad on Gold Mountain (Historical Fiction)

Book Review: A Railroad on Gold Mountain by Fay Chiang

                    Hello everyone, welcome back to my book review. Today I will be reviewing an interesting tale about a Chinese immigrant who came to America in the 1860s after the Civil War to find work and send money back home. His father had already been America for 10 years prior and when they met they were both able to get jobs working on the railroad. One night while eating dinner the main character and many of his friends herd a large explosion on the mountain. They all went running to help the men hurt in the explosion despite some of them being extremely mean towards the Chinese immigrants.

                     This was an interesting tale, but I have read other stories set during this time about immigrants that were much more riveting. The story is very abrupt and one does not truly get to know the character and I truly think children would be bored reading it. The message behind it is morally high, but as I said I've read much better books on this topic. I rate this book a 1/5 stars.

Title: A Railroad on Gold Mountain
Author: Fay Chiang
Publisher: McGraw Hill
Publishing Date: January 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-02-147787-6

Comments

  1. Stephen LowryJanuary 9, 2020 at 9:31 AM

    This book sounded like it could have been very interesting. It's unfortunate that they did not not develop the characters very well, because I was very intrigued reading the summary of the book. Immigrants were not treated well at all when they first came to the United States, so a book that talks about how they still went and saved those same people that treated them poorly could have been a great story.

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