HUMBUG MOUNTAIN

Sid Fleischman's zest for frontier foolishment and humbug is at full steam in this story of an itinerant newspaperman's family heading for their own six lots in the new city of Sunshine, planned and executed by their steamboat-captain grandfather. But instead of the fancy hotel and opera house pictured on the Sunshine litho, the Flints find only an abandoned riverboat, stranded when the Missouri River jumped its banks, moved over, and made Sunshine a premature ghost town by landing it in the dry state of Nevada where taverns aren't allowed. A summary would be unfair as Fleischman's lively incidentals dovetail too neatly to be abstracted—but the family does settle down on the riverboat, and at the end the digging gold miners that young Wiley Flint has inadvertently attracted to Sunshine cause the Missouri to shift back—with the following results: Sunshine is back in wet Dakota Territory and thus back in business; shifty Mr. Chitwood with his Nebraska claim to Sunshine property is drummed out of town; and rapscallious Shagnasty John and his sidekick the Fool Killer are foiled in their scheme to ambush Grandfather's new boat and its cargo of gold. Tarnatious fun all the way.