THE LONG ROAD WEST
A father & daughter novel of 1849

Two thousand miles.
One family.
The treasure wasn’t gold.

It’s 1849. Ten-year-old Emily Tanner walks beside an ox-drawn wagon, two thousand miles from everything she has ever known — toward a promise that is not quite what her father thinks it is.

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1849 The year
2,000 Miles
10–13 Ages
127 Pages
The Long Road West book cover: at sunset, Emily watches her family's covered wagon ford a river below snow-capped mountains
The Story

What she found was far more precious

Ten-year-old Emily Tanner set out from Illinois with her family to find gold in California. What she found instead was something far more precious.

It’s 1849, and as Emily walks beside an ox-drawn wagon across two thousand miles of wilderness, she learns that the promised golden fortune comes with a terrible price. There are rivers to cross, fever to survive, friends to lose, and a father so blinded by gold-hunger that he can’t see the real treasure he already carries — his family.

Based on the true experiences of families who crossed the plains during the Gold Rush, The Long Road West is a story about what we chase, what we lose, and what we learn is worth keeping. Perfect for middle-grade readers who love historical adventure and stories of resilience, this tale of courage, sacrifice, and family will stay with you long after the final page.

“They crossed a continent for gold. They found something worth more.”

The Journey

Walk the trail, stop by stop

Every mile of the Tanners’ road follows the real overland trail of 1849. Tap a stop to see what happens there — and what’s true about it.

N PACIFIC Alton, Illinois Council Grove The River The Platte High Plains Sierra Nevada The Diggings The Valley
The Weighing

What they carried

Everything the Tanners own must fit in one wagon — so they weigh everything. Not on a scale, but in their hearts.

The Wagon

Everything they own · four oxen · one rule

A bed no bigger than a modest room, high canvas over hickory bows, drawn by Buck, Bright, Duke, and Star. Everything the Tanners own must fit inside it or be left behind — and every pound is a pound the oxen must pull two thousand miles. The rule repeated until the children can say it in their sleep:

Weight is the enemy.

The Plow

Samuel · the argument that crossed a continent

It takes up more room than anything, and Margaret argues against it: “A man can dig gold without a plow, but he can’t feed a family with a gold pan when the gold runs out.” What happens to the plow — lost in the mountains, bought again in a green valley — is the story of the whole family.

Left for the wrong reasons. Replaced for the right ones.

Emily’s Journal

Emily · the book you are holding

The first journal and all the ones that came after — kept for seventy years and finally turned into this book, because Emily promised a girl on the plains that she would, and because her mother was right that people forget.

So that someone will always know it was real.

Thomas’s Creek-Stone

Thomas · a piece of home in a pocket

A plain gray stone from the creek on the farm in Illinois. Worth nothing at the diggings, and worth more than any poke of gold dust everywhere else. It rides two thousand miles in a six-year-old’s pocket and ends up in a place of honor on an old man’s mantel.

The only claim that never played out.

The Brass Scale

Margaret · the true mathematics of the diggings

A little brass scale for weighing gold dust in a mining camp — where Emily, kneeling in the mud, watches her mother work out the real arithmetic of the Gold Rush: the people selling flour and mended shirts do better than the men in the freezing creeks.

She weighed the gold. Then she weighed the life.

The Rocking Chair

Left behind · the price of going

Plain and worn smooth, it rocked Emily as a baby and Thomas after her. On the last day, when the wagon is full, it sits in the little pile of things that have no place on the trail — and Margaret stands over it for a long time. Some of what the road costs is paid before the first mile.

Some things stay so a family can go.
“We just had to walk the whole long road west to see it.”
Emily Tanner · The Long Road West
The Family

Meet the Tanners

A father with gold in his eyes, a mother with the truth in her hands, a girl who watches everything — and a boy with a rock in his pocket.

The father

Samuel Tanner

The hunger that is not about food

A farmer who has worked ground that never quite pays, until the word California gets into the house like a draft under a door. Strong, decent, and slowly blinded by gold — until the road teaches him what he was really carrying in the wagon all along.

The mother

Margaret Tanner

The wisest person in California

She argues for the plow, counts the flour, and holds the family together across two thousand miles. While her husband chases gold in the creeks, Margaret sees in a month what the diggings teach most men too late — and quietly builds the future the family actually gets.

The daughter

Emily Tanner

She watches everything, closely

Ten years old, keeper of the journal that becomes this book. Emily hears the word California through the floorboards of the loft and understands, with a child’s total certainty, that something has come loose in her family. Her promise — nobody gets left behind, nobody gets forgotten — becomes the true compass of the whole journey.

The little brother

Thomas Tanner

Six years old and never worried once

A boy who lives in a world of his own devising, fights private wars against anthills, and carries a plain gray creek-stone from Illinois all the way to California — and then keeps it on his mantel for the rest of a long and lucky life.

“We go as a family or we don’t go at all.”

Behind the byline

Written by a father and daughter,
side by side

A story about a family crossing hard country together — written by a family, together. Something made with his children, meant to be handed down for generations.

Meet Emily & Dad

From the first page

The dedication

For Emily

We crossed a whole country together, you and I —
one chapter at a time, side by side at the kitchen table.

May you always cherish the times we had together.
And wherever your own long road leads —
whatever you chase, and whatever you find —
remember this, because it will always be true:

I love you. Always.

— Dad

✦

Take the road west

127 pages · 20 chapters + epilogue · glossary & true-history notes included · perfect for ages 10–13, classrooms, and family read-alouds.

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