In this sequel to the best-selling novel When Eagles Call, two Hawaiian labourers — Kimo Kanui and his friend Moku — end their contract with the Hudson’s Bay Company in Fort Langley and trek north to join the great Cariboo gold rush of the early 1860s. Along with a black man from the Carolinas and a native Sto:lo woman won and freed in a card game, they face dangers and challenges along the trail as winter sets in. Gun-toting Californians, drunken miners, hostile natives as well as characters from British Columbia’s history — James Douglas, Judge Begbie, Ovid Allard and Cataline — stride through the novel. River of Gold takes the reader on a journey through B.C.’s tumultuous history as the Hudson’s Bay rule over New Caledonia ends and the province of British Columbia begins. It’s a story of war and peace, of greed, of friendship and hatred, and of a man and a woman of different cultures learning to love again. It is a story of the Cariboo, that great leveller, where a person’s mettle counted more than purse or pedigree, where strong men and women from all corners of the globe came together to forge a new and different society for British Columbians.