The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman

Our main character is 12 year-old California Morning Whipple, whose life is unsettled when her widowed mother uproots her and her brother, Butte, and sisters Prairie and Sierra from their comfortable residence in Massachusetts and decides to 'Go West' to California where 'the gold is just laying around' waiting to be picked!įaced with the rough reality of the New Frontier and Pioneer life, California misses her previous life and longs to come back home.

This is a wholesome story that begins in 1849 and set during the Westward Expansion and the California Gold Rush. Will Lucy learn to love California? Will she leave her family? I'll never tell! Great story, wonderful and believable characters. But California wants to go 'home.' She changes her name to Lucy and refuses to give up on her dream of saving enough money to return to her grandparents on the east coast.Īll kinds of adventures ensue, with falls in raging rivers, fires, suitors for Mama, and even racial issues. Along with her brother Butte, and sisters Sierra and Prairie, they slowly make a life in the rough frontier settlement. Even so, she becomes a big help to her mother, hunting game, making pies and helping in the boarding house where her mother is proprietress in Lucky Diggings, California.

She doesn't want to go and does so very grudgingly. I'd already read it, so I knew the kids would like it.Ĭalifornia Morning Whipple has lost her father and little sister, and now must move to California itself from her beloved Massachusetts. I have to get stories that are kid friendly, and this one did not disappoint. We listened to this book on tape on a drive.

The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman