In 1941, 100 copies of a memoir by Alice Edna Bush Berry were published privately by a small press. The book was called “The Bushes and the Berrys” and recounted the family histories of the Bush and Berry families and their subsequent adventures into the Klondike where they would strike it rich, as well as their later foray into the oil business. Eighty-two years later, Ariel Djanikian, a descendant of the Bush and Berry families, would release this novel that delves much more deeply into the impact the Gold Rush not only had on this one family, but also on the landscape and the groups of Natives displaced by the rush of white Americans hell-bent on claiming the “free” land that would make them rich.

On researching Djanikian, I stumbled upon some interesting facts about her life that inspired her to write such a work. While her great-great-grandmother, Alice Bush (sometimes referred to as Edna or Tot), was on the receiving end of fortune at the expense of others, her Armenian father had escaped Turkey during the Armenian genocide of 1915, an event that claimed his parents and siblings. Djanikian says, “[w]hen writing this book, I wanted to dramatize the way fortunes are made, how individuals position themselves within families to seize wealth, and how racism is used as a cruel instrument for maximizing profit.”^* We tend to celebrate the plethora of “rags to riches” stories that come out of the American frontier while turning a blind eye to those whose lands, resources and ways of life were stripped from them by force.

Life is not as simple as a 1950’s Hollywood western where the brave and ethical cowboy battles the bad guys and saves the damsel in distress. In the true American west, cruelty reigned supreme and was so often motivated by racial prejudice and sheer greed. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean that Djanikian presents the Bushes and Berrys as villains. She presents them as humans, driven at first by desperation and then at the prospect of more. Let’s face it, history is full of people who, when presented with a better life, take it. They didn’t hesitate and ruminate on consequences. They saw people stepping off boats with pocketfuls of gold and the promise that if you can get yourself there alive, the land is yours for the taking. They weren’t evil, but the Bush and Berry families were like other prospectors of their time, consumed by a single-minded quest to better their own lives while remaining completely ignorant of the injustice that should have been right before their very eyes.

Djanikian also presents a future generation, a character named Anna who, at her Grandfather’s behest, sets off on a quest to the Klondike to make amends to the descendants of those wronged by her ancestors. While Alice’s initial memoir reads more like a journal laying out the surface facts of their family history, Djanikian’s novel delves so much deeper into the things that we can’t really know but that make sense. No single character is perfect but they are very authentic, and I applaud her for her ability to capture the nuances of the time. Readers won’t necessarily much like this version of Alice, but they won’t be able to deny that she’s a compelling historical figure very representative of the type of woman who persevered during such a time.

There’s a fair amount of excitement peppered throughout this book to make sure the adventure aspect is still present, but it’s still thought provoking and powerful in its historical presentation of identity, both racial and gender, and in family dynamics. It pretty expertly shows how the corrupting influence of money just continues to trickle down through generations and erodes what little dignity there is left of a family, with some important exceptions.

I highly recommend this book for lovers of historical fiction, especially if you’re looking for those lesser-covered subjects and time periods. Additionally, if you’re interested in reading Alice Bush Berry’s original memoir, it’s available pretty much anywhere online as it’s in the public domain, so check them both out.

• Spencer, George. “Genre-jumping Fulbright Scholar Takes a Novel Path.” October 27, 2023. https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2023/10/27/genre-jumping-fulbright-scholar-takes-a-novel-path/

Published October 3, 2023 by William Morrow. ISBN 9780063289734. 448 pages. Hardcover.