Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/12/the-best-ya-books-of-2015-1.html?p=2

Rae Carson, C. (September, 2015 ).Walk on Earth a Stranger. Greenwillow Books.

This book is a fast read and will leave you hanging because it is one of the first books of a trilogy. A young 15 year old girl names Leah, has a secret that she can detect when there is gold around. Something that has help her to sustain her family who live in an isolated part of Dahlonega, GA, but soon her relative suspect something extraordinary about her and kill her parents. Then her money hungry uncle comes to claim her parents’ property and use her for his money ambitions. This leads her and her best friend a half Cherokee Indian boy to escape and travel to California during the Gold Rush. In her journey she decides its best to dress like a boy so she will have more facility to move around across the United States. But most people suspected Lee was a girl because of her feminine features. In a time when women were nothing without a man to support them and Men had bias believes about God provision. Lee could support and defend herself among life’s obstacles as she went on the long wagon trail to California. She encounters many sickness and death as well as hardship. And on top all that she is still grieving for her parents.  Jefferson is her friend from Georgia, who leaves for the West before she does, just after her parents are murdered. They don’t meet up until Lee reaches Independence, Missouri. Jefferson is used to people treating him terribly. He keeps Lee's secret about being a girl from everyone. When we see Leah eventually find Jefferson she also finds people that she comes to care for and care for her.

Depending on the audience, this book could be an excellent resource for a homeschooling unit, as well as just a great a fascinating history lesson on women hardships during this period of time.

This the next book to the trilogy where know she has settle in California and just when things were going smoothly she encounters her Uncle who kidnapped her and forces her to find some gold for him.

On TEachers pay Teachers website you can find several lessons for this book example is the following:

The 1849 California Gold Rush: A Student Exploration on the Gold Rush!

Students learn about the creation of the Gold Rush, who was involved, how people traveled, the struggles they faced, the laws of supply and demand, the cultures that thrived (and those that didn't), and how the population of the region surged! 

Students are guided through this exploration with primary source documents, secondary source texts, a variety of images, graphs, and charts! Too, each section of this exploration concludes with a page (4-8 questions) of very focused common-core aligned questions that force students to go back into their text to justify their answers.

The sections of this activity are as follows:

- Introduction
- Catching the Fever
- Traveling to "Gold Country"
- Life in "Gold Country"
- Too Late? Too Bad!
- An Equal Gold Rush for All?
- The Birth of San Francisco
- San Francisco and California Population Growth

California Gold Rush Lesson Plan Collection

This great lesson plan collection includes five lesson plans covering the California Gold Rush. One webquests, two primary source worksheets, a journal activity, and a miner role-playing game are included in this collection. My students really enjoy these lesson plans!

The following lesson plans are included in this collection:
California Gold Rush Webquest
California Gold Rush Webquest: What did it really cost?
California Gold Rush 1849 Primary Source Worksheet
California Gold Rush Vigilante Justice 1851 Primary Source Worksheet
Gold Rush Journal (Not Independently Posted on TPT)
Gold Rush Activity/Simulation (Not Independently Posted on TPT)