Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning

 

Title:  Gilded Mountain

Author:  Kate Manning

Narrated by:  Dawn Harvey

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 16 hours and 5 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

 

Have you ever visited an area with mountains?  Where and what did you love?

I haven’t yet made it to the Rocky Mountains, but I’ve been to the Appalachian Mountains several times.  They are beautiful.

Sylvie Pelletier is in for the adventure of a lifetime when she reconnects with her father after she, her mother, and brothers move to Moonstone Colorado. Her father is a machinist working in a marble mine.  Conditions are dangerous and treacherous.  The downtrodden mine workers face unsafe conditions without pay.  Sylvie gets hired as the personal secretary of the mine owner’s wife and lives a summer seeing the gilded life that the other half lives.  She finds herself torn between Jace, the idealist son of the mine owner, and George, a union organizer.  What does Sylvie want to do with her life?

I was intrigued by this historical fiction novel.  Mining and the labor movement are two items I am very interested in. I went to college at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan and took a Copper Country history class.  I loved touring the area and learning more about mining and labor history.  Many of the things that took place in Gilded Mountain, such as a visit from Mother Jones, also took place in the Copper Country. The labor movement was in the early 1900’s in both the Copper Country and Gilded Mountain.  Gilded Mountain piqued my interest.  I had never thought about marble mining and now I want to visit one in Colorado.

I enjoyed Sylvie’s coming of age through a tumultuous time.  I also liked that her coming of age had her seeing both the sad and poor conditions of the minors as well as the gilded lifestyle of the mine owner.  It’s the vast difference between the two that makes her believe that things need to change.  The love triangle was also interesting, although I’ll admit that I didn’t think either one was perfect for her.

I thought it was intriguing that the mine owner and his family are from Virginia.  The Padgett’s bring their African American cook, Easter, and her husband with them to their Colorado estate.  Through them, Sylvie also learns about racial issues.  These racial issues also tear at Jace.  He can’t seem to live up to his father’s expectations, which is based a lot on Jace’s forward thinking on racial issues.

 The narrator, Dawn Harvey, is fantastic.  She is not only able to speak in beautiful fluent French when needed, but she had distinct voices for different characters.  It made it a really enjoyable audiobook to listen to while driving around for work in April.