The Hills of Gold. The Kettering Family Chronicles, #2

It was just a simple plan; to build a water-powered sawmill on the banks of a river, a river which ran through a tranquil and almost empty paradise. That was California in 1848; once a Spanish colony on the far side of the continent, on the edge of the wide Pacific Ocean - thousands of miles from anywhere significant. Nine year old Jon Kettering came along with his father and his adopted older brother Henry to help with the work.
And one morning, the boss of construction found some bright gold pebbles in the millrace. That chance finding meant the shattering of one world, and the beginning of another, as the world rushed in, mad for gold, at any cost. The tumultuous first year of the California gold rush, the old wild west observed through the wide eyes of a boy; this is the second in the continuing saga of the Kettering family, the sequel to West Towards the Sunset.