Dreaming the Golden Butterfly

About the Book

They called themselves Argonauts, after Jason and the Argonauts of antiquity, and like their namesakes, they went to the ends of the earth in search of an elusive quest. John Decker is only one of them, one of thousands that flooded the Cariboo in 1862 in the mad scramble for gold. He left behind a fiancée in San Francisco and staked everything to follow in his dead father's footsteps, hoping to make good on an old claim. But he got more than he bargained for when he connected with his father's erstwhile partner, James Grant, and Grant's mysterious wife, Madeline. Grant had come to the Cariboo to prospect for gold, but had fallen into the dissolute life of a gambler. Madeline had come fleeing a past she wanted to forget, but could not exorcise the dreams that haunted her.

In this highly descriptive and dramatic remythologizing of the pivotal event of the history of British Columbia, Field vividly recreates the scene. British Columbia in 1862 was a wild and untamed country. The discovery of gold would transform a ramshackle outpost of greed and overblown expectation into the largest settlement west of Chicago and north of San Francisco, bursting with saloons, dancehalls, and opium dens. In the process it would turn a lucky few into rich men.

About the Author

Field grew up in Bridge River, where memories of the gold rushes of British Columbia's not so distant past still live. He graduated from U.B.C. with a degree in history, and studied religion at McMaster. Since then his stories have been published in various journals and magazines in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of Seas of Enchantment and Journey to Hyperborea. He lives in New Westminster, the gateway to the Cariboo Gold Rush of the 1860s.