Elk Girl, sister of a Ute chief, lives a traditional life with her tribe high in the Rocky Mountains in 1860. Elk Girl is bold: She loves to hunt deer with her brother, and she races her pony to win. She also knows the importance of ceremonies like the Bear Dance, which wakes the bears from hibernation and celebrates spring.

But all of that changes when Cheyenne warriors capture Elk Girl. They take her to the Great Plains and make her a slave. On the Plains, Elk Girl encounters white men for the first time, and she sees how the Cheyenne have come to depend on their handouts. She also sees...

GOLD GOLD GOLD scream the headlines in July 1987, announcing the discovery of gold in the Yukon. Fourteen-year-old James Erickson, alone in the world after his father's death, is mesmerized when he sees the first ship of prospectors enter the San Francisco harbor. Caught up in the gold fever, he books passage on a steamer up to Alaska.

In Alaska, James meets Tip, a skinny boy who turns out to be a girl--and the only person James trusts to be his partner. Together they embark on a treacherous trek over the mountains and down the river, battling rapids, con men, and the cold. When their...