For the first time in a single volume, this is the true adventure of John Fisk (1829-1905), who set out for San Francisco in 1849 at the start of the gold rush. A lost chronicle once serialized in the nineteenth century, Fisk's accounts present an honest and insightful portrait of the opening of the American West. His travels took him around Cape Horn and across the Great Plains. Along the way, he found gold, fought Indians, and made two great friends in Jim, who swung a mean frying pan, and Old Burr, their trusty hound. This is a must read that has been brought to publication by Bruce Adam, Fisk's great-great grandson and author of Dreams of a Lifetime.

Midwest Book Review

John Fisk was one of the men who flooded into California in 1849 as part of an immense gold rush. Fisk kept a journal of his experiences and that journal has now been edited by his great-great grandson Bruce Adam and published by Ara Pacis Publishers. In Search of Gold: Journal of Incidents on Land and Sea reads with all the drama and excitement of a novel, but is an authentic historical narrative that is a welcome and invaluable contribution to the history of what the '49ers experienced in reaching and working the California gold fields. Enhanced with a poem "The Cranberry Webb Worm" and an appendix laying out John Fisk's lineage, In Search of Gold is a minor masterpiece of the journalist's art and a memorable, informative, and entertaining narrative record of life in the yesteryear of California frontier history.