Review: More short story than novel -- not a bad quick read
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 1, 2012
David Loeff's ORPHAN'S GOLD tells the story of 14-year-old Virgil who sets out to find his missing father, who has been mining gold in Colorado for six months.  The year is 1862, Lincoln is president, and the Colorado Gold Rush is nearing its end.  When Virgil discovers that his father has apparently died in a mine cave-in, he is determined to find the body and give him a proper burial.  But instead of his father, he finds a mysterious room full of blue fog that takes him on a journey through time.ORPHAN'S GOLD is really more a short story than a novel - at around 48 pages, it takes about 45 minutes to read.  Considering how much plot Loeff has crammed into those few pages, it's a shame he didn't develop it into a full-fledged novel.  Instead, much of the action is summarized as we follow Virgil's journey to his father's gold mine in Colorado, and then to his various time-travel destinations.  Things happen and time passes, but none of it is immediate and it all feels like a retelling of the novel it could have been.  Virgil meets a young woman named Argoura in a prehistoric village, and his feelings for her grow through the rest of the story.  But we learn little about Argoura, and even less about the other people he meets in his travels.  Similarly, Virgil's response to the various time periods he visits lacks the kind of intensity you would expect from such traumatic journeys.  He seems pretty much unfazed by either woolly mammoths or futuristic technology.Overall, ORPHAN'S GOLD is a quick and easy read that could have been an interesting novel - had it been developed and fleshed out.  As it is, it whets the imagination but doesn't satisfy.  Loeff describes this "novel" as intended for "adults and mature young adults."  I found it to be distinctly YA in both style and content, although older teens might be frustrated by the lack of dialogue and reliance on summary to tell story.  The relationship between Virgil and Argoura is definitely PG (nothing for parents to get concerned about), and I found Argoura's behavior to be very contemporary (meaning I had a hard time seeing her as a prehistoric teen - I doubt 15-year-old girls during the Pleistocene spent much time holding hands with cute boys!).  Do I recommend ORPHAN'S GOLD?  Sure - the price is good and Loeff leaves his readers with a few things to think about (even global warming comes into play at one point).  I just wish he had taken the story a little further and given us a real novel.