A review by tora76
Dragon's Gate by Laurence Yep

3.0

This is the story of Otter, a Chinese boy who joins his father and uncle in America to work on the railroad. It's part of the Golden Mountain Chronicles. The books stand alone, though, or at least this one does. I just picked out a couple from the series that sounded the most interesting (this one and one about the 1903 SF earthquake) to try it. The writing's pretty good, though, so I may eventually try to get the rest.[return][return]Sadly, I didn't actually know much about this particular bit of history. I knew that Chinese laborers worked on the railroads and was under no illusions about what the conditions must have been like, but I didn't actually know any of the details. So it's an interesting read for that alone, but the story itself is pretty good, too.[return][return]I am not a fan of translating names, but in this case since it's nicknames I'm willing to give the author a little slack.