The Goldfield

Hope City is the adventure story of Samuel Rothman and his best friend Liam Kampen, two teenage boys from San Francisco, who, in the summer of 1898, venture into the goldfields of the Alaskan wilderness. Warned by his father to conceal his Jewish heritage from the ruffians he may encounter, Samuel changes his name to the less conspicuous Percy Hope.

It’s 1898, and one of history’s most abundant gold discoveries has shaken awake the desolate city of Cape Nome, Alaska. This monumental find by John Brynteson, Jafet Lindeberg, and Erik Lindblom earns them the moniker of the Three Lucky Swedes. News of their good fortune spreads swiftly, and by the summer of 1900, tens of thousands of dreamers trek over land and by sea to the mines surrounding Anvil Creek and upon the Bering Sea beaches, where gold deposits pepper the soft sands.  

In the autumn of 1901, our protagonist, Percy Hope, ventures off to New York City’s Lower East Side in search for his six-month-old son Walter, and his mother, the fugitive Peggy Greenburg. Along the way, Percy stumbles upon a journal left behind by the late Magnus Vega chronicling his adventure into Alaska’s wilderness, along with a cryptic map that sends Percy and his friend Liam upon a quest, where they must track down a lost fortune of gold, outmaneuver gangsters, and decipher the mysteries of what happened to Magnus under North America’s tallest peak—Denali mountain.