The Prospectors: A Novel [Paperback]

A sweeping rags-to-riches story about claiming the American Dream, following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush.

“Told in glimmering prose and rich with historical detail...you can feel the grit on your hands.”—Celeste Ng

Smart, surprising, and epic. —Chris Bohjalian

The middle daughter of struggling California fruit farmers, Alice Bush is accustomed to feeling inferior and destitute. But when her elder sister’s husband strikes a vein of gold in the Yukon Territory, Alice joins a wave of white settlers making the dangerous trek to the Klondike, thus beginning a generations-long family saga and quest for wealth that unfolds against the icy Canadian wilderness and the booming oilfields of California.

In a compelling dual timeline one hundred years later, in 2015, Alice’s great-great-granddaughter Anna must grapple with moral conflict and questions of justice as she travels to the Klondike to bequeath her would-be inheritance to the First Nations peoples who paid the price for its creation.

Bringing the Klondike and turn-of-the-century California to vivid life, Ariel Djanikian weaves an ambitious historical fiction narrative of claiming the American Dream and its rippling effects across generations. Sweeping and awe-inspiring,The Prospectorsis an unforgettable story of family loyalties that interrogates the often-overlooked hostilities and inequities born during the Gold Rush era.

“Fast-paced…Exciting to read…The Office of Mercyis an indisputable page-turner with a surprising ending.” -NPR

“Vivid and precise, this epic story asks what happens after the gold rush, to those whose pockets are deep and to those whose pockets have been picked. Djanikian brings the historical details to life as well as the moral questions of the present in this rich, glittering novel.” -Emma Straub, New Yol#)