William Martin

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning historical novelist WILLIAM MARTIN—author of Back Bay and Harvard Yard—for a discussion of his latest novel, Bound for Gold.

About Bound for Gold

Bound for Gold continues New York Times bestselling author William Martin’s epic of American history with the further adventures of Boston rare-book dealer Peter Fallon and his girlfriend, Evangeline Carrington. They are headed to California, where their search for a lost journal takes them into the history of Gold Rush. The journal follows young James Spencer, of the Sagamore Mining Company, on a spectacular journey from staid Boston, up the Sacramento River to the Mother Lode. During his search for a “lost river of gold,” Spencer confronts vengeance, greed, and racism in himself and others, and builds one of California’s first mercantile empires.

In the present, Peter Fallon’s son asks his father for help appraising the rare books in the Spencer estate and reconstructing Spencer’s seven-part journal, which has been stolen from the California Historical Society. Peter and Evangeline head for modern San Francisco and quickly discover that there’s something much bigger and more dangerous going on, and Peter’s son is in the middle of it. Turns out, that lost river of gold may be more than a myth.

Past and present intertwine as two stories of the eternal struggle for power and wealth become one.

Praise

“Plenty of skullduggery and labyrinths of mystery lace this gem about the California gold rush. The prose and plot are as sharp as a broken piece of glass. Another masterpiece from the master of historical fiction.” ―Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author

“In the tradition of James Michener, this epic about the California gold rush (and a parallel modern one) is wonderfully engrossing and addictive. William Martin made me believe I was on the banks of those rugged mountain streams, panning for the dust that dreams are made of and lives are lost to. Ambitious, exciting, and vividly researched. A twenty-four karat read.” ―David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As a Fine Art

“Epic in scale, eloquent in execution, Bound for Gold is a pure delight. The great Forty-Niner gold rush comes to vivid life in William Martin’s skillful, suspenseful, and original retelling, and its resonance into the present is nothing short of mesmerizing.” ―John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author