Anisett Lundberg California, 1851

by Louise Erdrich

Like Anisett, your protagonist here is a young person navigating a dangerous frontier landscape where survival depends on quick thinking and family loyalty. Erdrich grounds her story in the same meticulous historical detail Duey uses—you'll feel the weight of daily life in 1847 Ojibwe country the way you felt the grit of those gold camps.

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Anderson does something Duey does brilliantly: she makes historical catastrophe feel immediate and personal through a teenage girl's eyes. The yellow fever epidemic functions exactly like the gold rush does in your book—a massive historical force that strips away civilization and forces characters to reveal who they really are under pressure.

by George MacDonald

Here's your curveball: this is fantasy, but it shares Anisett's DNA in unexpected ways. Like your protagonist, the main character is an outsider thrust into a dangerous world of adults with hidden agendas, where he must navigate treacherous social rules and figure out who to trust. The emotional core—a young person's quiet competence in the face of institutional hostility—mirrors what makes Anisett compelling.

by Charles Portis

Published in 1968, this gives you a different era's take on the American frontier, but Portis captures something essential that Duey does: the voice of a determined young person who refuses to be diminished by circumstance. Mattie Ross has the same unflinching pragmatism as Anisett—both girls understand that survival requires you to see the world as it actually is, not as you wish it to be.

by Dave Hughes

This 2023 narrative history reads like a novel and captures that same tension between individual ambition and historical forces that drives Anisett's story. Mametsch follows a naval officer whose fortunes hinge on a single moment of chance—much like how Anisett's gold becomes both her salvation and her curse. You'll appreciate how both authors show how luck and character interact in worlds that don't care about fairness.