An unforgettable story of a little girl growing up in the exhilarating time after the big Alaska gold rushes.

Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction

Bo's family is not the usual, ordinary sort of family, because she didn't get it in the usual, ordinary way.

She was headed for a lonely Alaska orphanage when she won the hearts of two tough gold miners who set out to raise her, enthusiastically helped by the other miners, the good-time girls, and all the kind people of the nearby Eskimo village on the Koyukuk River.

Bo learns Eskimo along with English, is involved in the lives of her friends at Ballard Creek ,helps in the cookshack, learns to polka, rides along with Big Annie and her dog team. And there's always some kind of excitement : a bi-plane landing, the first bulldozer, a roaming bear, the dog-team mail delivery, and a lost little boy whose father has died on the winter trail.

"A warm tale set in an Alaskan gold-mining town. . . . Bo is an enduring Pollyana in a parka." —Kirkus Reviews

Illustrations by LeUyen Pham