The Prospectors

A Novel

By: Ariel Djanikian

Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Samara Naeymi

A sweeping rags-to-riches story of survival and greed across American history following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush.

“Told in glimmering prose and rich with historical detail, The Prospectors immerses us in the Yukon Gold Rush so deeply, you can feel the grit on your hands.”—Celeste Ng

""Smart, surprising, and epic: the sort of adventure that brings to life both a nineteenth-century gold rush and a twenty-first century fight for the family riches that remain.""—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 finally seizes control of her destiny by joining a wave of white settlers making the dangerous trek to the Klondike.

What follows is an awakening of ambition for the quietly opportunistic Alice, who, by luck and circumstance, becomes tightly intertwined in her sister and brother-in-law’s newfound fortune, as well as the beginning of a generations-long family quest for wealth that unfolds against the icy Canadian wilderness and the booming oilfields of California.

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 narrative of claiming the American Dream and its rippling effects across generations. Sweeping and awe-inspiring, The Prospectors is an unforgettable story of family loyalties that interrogates the often-overlooked hostilities and inequities born during the Gold Rush era.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The greed that money produces can be damning.

So much grief all thru the novel. Only money and material things seemed to be considered happiness. I found it tedious at times, but got the picture of all people sacrificed for wealth.

Good story overall.

Did NOT like the narrator for the granddaughter; really broke the vibe of the story.

Vocal fry

The present day narrators vocal fry drove me crazy and was distracting which made it hard to get into the story

great info about gold rush

Good story written from an old family diary. Quite long. could have used some editing.

The story was fantastic- wish I had read it rather than listened to it

The narrator reading the present day character has an extremely grating voice due to its nasal whining tonality-