Sierra: A Novel of the California Gold Rush

Richard S. Wheeler turns his great storytelling talent to an epic tale of riches, greed, and love set against the backdrop of the greatest gold stampede in American history, The California Gold Rush of 1849. When news of the gold strike sweeps the east, Ulysses McQueen is smitten with gold fever and heads west, leaving his new bride and a settled life in Iowa behind. And when Stephen Jarvis, a New York cooper's apprentice is discharged from the army in Monterey, he finds himself in the middle of an upheaval that is transforming California into a gold-fevered madhouse. In the midst of turning himself into a businessman, he meets and loves Rita Concepcion Estrada, the daughter of a patrician Californio, and a woman he can never win.

While McQueen struggles along the California trail, the heart-broken Jarvis supplies the miners and grows wealthy, if eternally lonely.

This great saga of the settling of California won a Spur Award for best long novel from Western Writers of America, and has gone into numerous editions.