The concept of this book is excellent. Retracing his great great grandfather’ s path across North America during gold rush times Via his 1800s diary entries. The parallels of the diary and authors more recent experiences crossing the continent provide thought provoking observations on urbanization, the state of middle America and family heritage.

There is some beautiful geographic description by the author but at other times a lot of telling and not showing. There was one chapter filled with mostly a list of artifacts and heirlooms of his family “that all have a story.”

Again the idea is excellent, the structure of short parallel chapters in different times but same setting, could be used as a model for creative writing activities in history lessons. The book is too long to utilize in full in the classroom and the lack of distinction between diary and recent narrative made the audio version slightly confusing at times.

Overall interesting and glad I listened. Thank for to netgalley and the publishers for this copy.

This was a very good book that tells the history of the author’s family member’s journey to California along with the history of the author’s trek to follow that route. I felt as though I was along side of him and his wife.
A good description of our United States.

This was interesting topic to read about - and made me want to play Oregon Trail again. I've always been fascinated by people traveling across the country back in the 1800s when they're going into the unknown and coming across difficult crossings and paths without all the amenities we currently have. It is just wild.

I found the diary entries the most interesting part of the book. Sometimes it seems like it would switch timelines after a few sentences, and sometimes it would be pages. There wasn't always a clear distinction so it made it confusing sometimes to realize you're back in the other timeline.