PLAGUE OF FLIES

A young woman embarks on a quest to hold off Yankee gold miners in this alternate-history YA novel.

When three strangers ride into the rancho of Don Ygnacio Delgado in Alta California, they bring alarming news. It’s June 1846, and Yankees—called Bear Flaggers for their makeshift, grizzly-bear standard—have captured Gen. Mariano Vallejo and claimed the whole territory for the United States. The raiders also killed the brother of Tomás Tomás, the older rider, as well as three Delgado family friends. Tomás, who is Costanoan, has another shock for 16-year-old Catalina Delgado; she is his granddaughter. Her real mother, now dead, was named Rain Falling, and Catalina is a mestiza, not pure gente de razón. This newfound status could lower her prospects of marriage to her beloved Ángelo Ortega, a match already in danger from a prophecy that a Spirit Man will come and take her away. In a world where Catalina is locked into her bedroom every night to protect her reputation, Ángelo’s father will insist on a girl of unblemished chastity. Now, Tomás relates Rain Falling’s childhood dream, in which a prophetic spiritual figure called Coyote said that her daughter would be stolen, to be returned when she hides a gold strike. This will be heralded by three signs—a false bear flag, a murdered brother, and a man on a black Andalusian stallion riding a thunder cloud. On his black horse, Spirit Man does come to Catalina. He shows her gold nuggets in a stream and a hiding place, Spirit Waker Cave, although the inevitable “plague of two-legged flies” that will transform Alta California can only be postponed. Catalina, too, as well as her hopes and dreams, will be forever changed by her challenging new destiny.

In her second YA novel that’s set in a magical-realist 19th-century California, Hill gives readers a wonderfully imaginative, unsettling view of events leading up to the 1849 gold rush. Many narratives emphasize the excitement of this time and California’s newfound wealth, population growth, and influence, but this book foreshadows the disasters—starvation, slaughter, dispossession—inflicted on Indigenous people. It’s a theme that could become heavy-handed, but Catalina’s passionate teenage energy gives propulsion to the dramatic plot. She’s caught up in a whirlwind of romantic hopes; her fear of the mysterious, ambiguous Spirit Man and his nameless horse; the weightiness of her task; and spiritual questioning. Although multiple prophecies and spiritual forces push Catalina on her transformative journey, the urgency doesn’t seem warranted given that her efforts will have very limited effect and duration. It’s hinted that her alteration will help connect loved ones, but that seems unrelated to the gold question. Still, typical teenager-with-a-quest stories end in shiny triumph (even if losses occur along the way), and Hill does well to take the story beyond that trope in unexpected directions that show the depth of Catalina’s sacrifice and love.

An atmospheric magical-realist tale with a compellingly ominous interpretation of the gold rush.