Thanks to Riverhead Books for the free advance copy of this book.

In the American West at the tail end of the gold rush, Lucy and Sam find themselves orphans when their Ba dies. As they set off to bury him and flee their small mining town, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD looks back at the path their family took to arrive in this dire position.

This book is filled with ghosts, with longing, with love. Overflowing with beautiful, haunting images, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD is a meditation on the safety and the pain of family.

In this book, characters that at first seem cartoonish are slowly revealed to had simply slid down a slope of bad decisions - decisions that affect the rest of their family in ways they won't know until much later. Each person tries so desperately to hold on to their sense of self and home, with each member of the family defining home differently.

Additionally, HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD isn't widely marketed as a queer book, but queerness runs deep in the story. Sam, while they don't have the words for it, is some variety of trans or gender nonconforming, which shapes both Sam and Lucy's lives quite dramatically. It was incredible to see a queer person in a historical setting where they are usually completely erased.