The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

Summary

Narrated by a wry, bookish thirteen-year-old, the novel follows Jaimie and his feckless physician father as they join the rush to the California gold fields in 1849, encountering a parade of frontier eccentrics along the way. Taylor leans on the picaresque tradition, blending tall-tale humor with period detail drawn from diaries and newspapers. It offered mid-century readers a comic counterweight to the era's heavier psychological fiction.