Yellar Boy and Hey Finn: teen boys in the old west - Paperback

by Tom Gnagey (Author)

The year was 1867. The Transcontinental Railroad was being built across the US northwest. A fourteen-year-old orphan boy from Chicago and one from southeastern China cross paths in Wyoming along the new track. The story first sets up the life of Kim Woo and how he arrived at the Twin Peaks sailing across the Pacific as a cabin boy on a three masted cargo ship from China, and then traces Mack O'Henry's horseback trek that followed his escape from a boy's detention home and landed him at those same peaks. Chinese and Irishmen were treated badly in those days. The story shows how they were forced to cope with it while evading evil men who wanted to harm them. There is a secret code that just might lead them to a gold mine already registered to Kim by a father he never knew. As different as they are, they grow close and come to appreciate both their differences and similarities. Best for 12 to 15 year olds. (Some violence and hardship.)