Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning (Whitegirl; My Notorious Life) is an expansive novel of passions: love, beauty and suffering; struggles for labor rights, women's equality and the rights of formerly enslaved people. Set in the early-1900s Colorado mountains, this enthralling story stars Sylvie Pelletier, who travels west at age 17 to find the world broader, more lovely and more terrible than she'd imagined. Gilded Mountain tracks her coming of age and the troubles of her family and the marble miners of Moonstone.
Sylvie's father, Jacques, is beloved by his family and his coworkers in the marble quarry, who call him "Frenchy," but Sylvie's mother fears he will again meet danger with his union organizing. Sylvie graduates from high school and apprentices as "printer's devil" to the freethinking K.T. Redmond, who further shocks townspeople by being a newspaperwoman. As conditions in the mines deteriorate and K.T. nurtures Sylvie's rebellious streak, the young protagonist is also invited into the household of Company owner Duke Padgett and his wife, the Countess, a place where Sylvie will be torn between her principles and love for her family, her class and her boss, and the temptations of the other life.
Gilded Mountain is an ambitious novel, swelling to encompass labor rights, women's rights, the societal role of the free press, the rights of Black Americans immediately following the Civil War, lynching, immigration and more. The result is a painfully beautiful novel of big ideals, heartbreaks and tragedies, sewn together by an admirable and unforgettable heroine. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia