
website of Katie Willmarth Green	writer/historian/genealogist

Deborah Whitney of Shady Flat: A Dauntless Girl of the Golden West

Deborah, age 5 The origins of Deborah Whitney of Shady Flat lie in a summer job I held a few years ago as tour guide and docent of a mining museum and county park. Young visitors, rifling through the kids' books we carried in our shop, complained bitterly that they'd read them all already, as they were the classics used in 4th grade California history classes. All summer long I heard them whine, "Don't you have anything new?"

Since then, I've given a lot of thought to what is significant for children (and adults) to know about the astonishing events of "The Excitement", and the people who took part in those tumultuous early days of the Gold Rush and the pioneer settlement period that followed. This includes the Native Americans and Mexicans who were displaced by the flood of emigrants. It happens that I know a fair amount about the only child who was born at my own childhood mining district home, Shady Flat. I had interviewed her grand-daughter in researching my first book of Sierra County history, Like A Leaf Upon the Current Cast. Belatedly, it occured to me that Debbie Whitney had enough depth of character to star in a lively tale of her own. I vowed that someday I would write a book about her... and so I have.

The book is largely populated by real people who took part in real events that occurred along the Yuba River from the Gold Rush to 1874, the year in which the story takes place. I did make up the dialogue and some situations that glue it all together, and invented one main character -- the girl, Selena Kelly, who is Debbie Whitney's arch-rival and foil.

Some of the themes are ones I recast from the previous book, now looking at them from the perspective of Debbie and her family at that time:

violence and other antisocial behavior peculiar to a predominently male frontier society ... and that infected and affected even the children
the civilizing role played by frontier women, but also their loneliness and isolation
desolate ugliness, dangers to health and welfare, and other environmental problems resulting from a poisoned, denuded land, ravaged by unbridled mining and timbering
prejudice and other forms of injustice so prevalent in early California

In addition, I dwell on the tender transition between early childhood and puberty, when Debbie begins to search for her own identity apart from who her parents want her to be. At her age (10 years), moral and ethical issues begin to assume increased importance and attitudes are formed for good or ill that will be carried into adulthood. That was then, but clearly the same tests face children and their parents now.

Finally, I wanted to give readers a taste of the natural glory of the Sierra despite all man's interference and carelessness, and to give some insight into the unique culture and circumstances experienced on a daily basis by a feisty, irrepressible young girl in 19th Century California.

A sequel -- Deborah Whitney, Daughter of the Mountains -- is well underway!