Dragon's Gate (novel)

Dragon's Gate is a children's historical novel by Laurence Yep, published by HarperCollins in 1995. It inaugurated the Golden Mountain Chronicles below and it is the third chronicle in narrative sequence among ten published as of 2012.

Yep and Dragon's Gate won the Newbery Medal award, 1994.^[1]

Plot

Otter, a fourteen year-old Chinese boy growing up during the opium wars and the oppression of the Manchu dynasty. Otter wishes to travel to America, to the Land of the Golden Mountain called California. He longs to travel to California, so he could plot with rebels called the Great Work in order to take back their country. After accidentally killing a Manchu, Otter's life is in danger, so he was sent to America to join his father and uncle. Otter was enthusiasm to go to America, only to find out the reality of being a Chinese immigrant, working in the brutal cold, and awful conditions. Otter is filled with disgust and becomes desperate to return back home to defeat the Manchu.

Golden Mountain Chronicles

The family saga follows the Young family, initially in China. Dragons of Silk (2011) spans a few generations and brings the story to the present; nine previous novels have been dated 1849 to 1995.

1. The Serpent's Children, set in 1849 (1984)
2. Mountain Light, 1855 (1985)
3. Dragon's Gate, 1867 (1993)
4. The Traitor, 1885 (2003)
5. Dragonwings, 1903 (1975)
6. Dragon Road, 1939 (2007); originally The Red Warrior
7. Child of the Owl, 1960 (1977)
8. Sea Glass, 1970 (1979)
9. Thief of Hearts, 1995 (1995)
10. Dragons of Silk, 1835-2011 (2011)

Four of the ten historical novels are among Yep's five works most widely held in WorldCat libraries.^[2]

References