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Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews – Chains of Gold by Ken Robb

Title: Chains of Gold: Based on the True Story of Slavery During the California Gold Rush

Author: Ken Robb

Publisher: Word Star Ink

Genre: Historical Fiction, US Historical Fiction

Published: September 22, 2025

Pages: 438 pages

The year is 1852, and Carter is shouting his freedom into the face of the law as deputies close in, threatening to drag him back to Mississippi in chains. From this moment of terror, the story retreats a couple of years back to the Perkins Plantation, where Carter is not free at all but enslaved, under the watch of a brutal overseer. It is here that Charles Perkins returns home from college to witness the abuse of his slaves.

Although Carter and Charles are half-brothers, playing side by side as boys, adulthood exposes the lie of that intimacy. One is granted power by birth; the other is denied ownership of his own body. I was struck by how powerfully the author juxtaposes affection and oppression throughout the story, illustrating how love can coexist with, and be corrupted by, slavery. Carter and Charles’ bond is no match for a system designed to break one man for the comfort of another.

Charles Perkins is the oldest to inherit the plantation. He was gifted land and slaves, and his father wants his sons to learn how to manage a plantation. Despite this, Charles is noticeably different from his brother. Rather than basking in the excitement of running his own plantation, Charles shows more compassion, doesn’t want the enslaved to be mistreated, and has dreams of going to California to find gold.

Carter is an intelligent Black man. He knows how to read despite being enslaved (something he hides), pays attention to details (especially details on slavery), carries his Bible everywhere he goes, and watches Charles’ back. He is more responsible and proves to be his brother’s keeper on more than one occasion.

While Carter yearns for true freedom, Charles is a man of his time. Despite how much grace he extends, he is still a slave master. As Charles reminisces about the beauty of the mansion and the land, recalling his father’s ambition and how hard their ancestors worked to farm and buy the land, Carter reminds him that “more land means more slaves.” He knows it was built with his family’s blood, sweat, and tears. (Robb 2025)

Though looking at the same view, the men see two different worlds. This is reflected throughout the story. While Charles’s love interest, Emmy, gives him a professional photo to remember her by, Carter’s love interest, Peg, gives him a charcoal drawing she made using a mirror.

My AI rendition of Carter and Charles

The narrative eventually follows Carter and Charles westward to California in pursuit of gold, a journey the author renders with careful attention to historical details. Rather than functioning solely as an adventure, the passage underscores the persistence of racial and social hierarchies across geographic space. In California, distance from the plantation does not translate into liberation from inherited roles. Charles’s attempts at fairness are marked by visible moral ambivalence, yet the surrounding society repeatedly reasserts the boundaries between them.

This tension is crystallized in several figures throughout the book, such as Bill, the seasoned miner, whose disapproval when Carter refers to Charles as his “master” exposes the unspoken codes governing race, power, and language. This tension resurfaces in Charles’s exchange with Fritz, who asks whether Carter is paid.

Although Charles views himself as well-intentioned, his decision not to compensate Carter—and his quiet assurance that the money would not matter to him—reveals how deeply he remains anchored in the assumptions of mastery. In this moment, Charles acts not as an equal or a brother, but as a man still shaped by the privileges of ownership.

The author does a good job of highlighting the lesser-known aspects of California’s history that are not widely taught.

Slavery and unfree labor were deeply ingrained during the Gold Rush era, despite California’s 1850 admission as a “free state” prohibiting slavery. Slaveholders brought enslaved Black people to work mines, and state laws like the 1852 Fugitive Slave Law enforced this practice. This resulted in complicated legal disputes, community resistance from free Black Californians, and the persistence of servitude until the Civil War.

The best thing about this book is that it’s based on a true story. Both the characters and the Gold Rush era are also well-researched, including the scene where Charles explains to the men how to transform the gold into banknotes. We often overlook the fact that paper money was once backed by gold, until the gold standard was removed in 1971 when Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold. This is why a dollar in 1800 had far more buying power than a dollar in 2025.

In 1850, $1 could buy what about $40 buys now.

This is a long book, so it will take some time to read. However, if you are looking for some good historical fiction, this one is well worth the time! I was eager to see what would become of the characters.

I think you will too.

Ratings

  • Plot Movement / Strength: 4/5
  • Entertainment Factor: 4/5
  • Characterization: 5/5
  • Authenticity / Believable: 5/5
  • Thought Provoking: 5/5

Overall: 5/5

Chains of Gold is Available On Amazon Here!

The Review Registry is Closed for 2025.

To Be Added to the Waitlist for 2026, please email the first chapter of your book to the email listed in our review policy with “Book Review Waitlist” in the subject line. While this does not guarantee a review, it places your book at the top of the list for consideration in the new year.

To apply for 2026, click here

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Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews is a reputable review service that features writers from around the world, including both traditionally and self-published authors. We are listed on Kindlepreneur as a top-tier book review blog and on Reedsy as one of their vetted active book blogs that provide insightful, excellent book reviews.

*Books are read in the order they are booked.

Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews -Cancer Courts My Mother by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Title: Cancer Courts My Mother

Author: LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Publisher: Prolific Pulse Press LLC

Genre: Contemporary Poetry, Death, Grief, and Loss Poetry

Published: November 7, 2025

Pages: 40 pages

We live in a society with a rule we’re never taught, but somehow already know: you do not speak ill of your mother. Mothers are indeed sacred, but in this language, the rule is that mothers are beyond critique, beyond blame, untouchable. It means you are never to speak badly of them. Ever. Not in public. Not even to yourself. It’s not carved in stone or written on any wall, yet it hovers among us silent, expectant, immovable. Cancer Courts My Mother defies that silence.

These poems and stories peel back the polite mask to reveal the complicated, aching truth of loving a mother who has not always loved you well—and then being asked to care for the very person who once caused the hurt. It is bravery set to verse, honesty without apology, and the painful dance between resentment and devotion when illness becomes the final judge.

“Bad memories are cadavers that refuse burial. Instead of an archive of velveteen nostalgia, her name leaves gravel in my mouth.”

The title suggests that cancer is courting the mother, but more deeply, the illness is also courting the daughter who tells this story. In this piece, LoSchiavo is not only the narrator; she is the wounded child. As she tends to a woman who once sharpened every word into a blade, she is confronted with a new version of her mother: frail, softened by illness, gentled by morphine.

“Cancer helped adorn my mother with patience, her acidic breath pausing to accept the spoon that brought breakfast.”

The disease becomes an unwanted chaperone, pulling the daughter into an intimate dance between what was and what is—between the sting of old wounds and the strange tenderness of caring for the very person who caused them.

In the piece “Flash,” the author reveals how her breached birth changed everything.

“To hear my mother tell it, a respectful infant should politely slide from the womb.”

I felt sympathy for the daughter because one cannot control how they enter the world, and she articulates this with a raw truth in the lines, “eventually, I became a vegetarian, refusing to eat anything that had a mother.”

These kinds of powerful lines are all throughout the book, and you’ll want to sit wth them. While the book is a short, quick read, you wouldn’t want to rush through it. The words deserve to be savored for their deeper meaning.

While holding space for the daughter, I also felt empathy for the mother. I know from the testimony of family and friends that motherhood is no fairytale. I understand how a mother can lose herself to the point of resentment. I enjoyed balancing these two thoughts, and I love that the author gave me this opportunity.

As the Grim Reaper inches closer to claiming his prize, we can see how, despite the daughter’s feelings toward her mom, it is not without deep love, proving society wrong: We can tell the truth about mothers while loving them.

As KE Garland writes: “There are kind ways to characterize those we love, without denigrating them.”

The way this book is written conveyed the truth without judgment.

“When my mother died, she took home along with her.”

As someone who has also lost her mom to multiple illnesses, I sympathize with that powerful line, and it reminds me of a line from Nayyirah Waheed, who says, “My mother was my first country. the first place i ever lived.”

(The non-capitalization in Waheed’s lines is intentional.)

My only wish is to see this as a whole book, maybe a memoir, so we can have the entire experience. The poetry and the prose, the haikus, are all excellent, but it’s such a good story that I wanted to read some of it raw and without poetic decoration.

Ratings

  • Structure and Form: 4/5
  • Originality/Authentic Voice: 4/5
  • Creativity/Lyrical Content: 5/5
  • Thought Provoking: 5/5

Overall: 4.5/5

Cancer Courts My Mother is Available Now on Amazon!

The Review Registry is Closed for 2025.

To Be Added to the Waitlist for 2026, please email the first chapter of your book to the email listed in our review policy with “Book Review Waitlist” in the subject line. While this does not guarantee a review, it places your book at the top of the list for consideration in the new year.

To apply for 2026, click here

Up Next: Chains of Gold by Ken Robb: Based on a True Story of Slavery During the California Gold Rush

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Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews is a reputable review service that features writers from around the world, including both traditionally and self-published authors. We are listed on Kindlepreneur as a top-tier book review blog and on Reedsy as one of their vetted active book blogs that provide insightful, excellent book reviews.

*Books are read in the order they are booked.

Slow Down: Why You Don’t Need to Rush the End of the Year

This is the time of year when many of us are inundated with a call to “finish the year strong.”

A time when we will be pressured by businesses, organizations, and entrepreneurial gurus to race to the finish line. Social media posts will bombard us with how many days of the year are left, year-end discounts, constant promotions, and posts about how much we’ve grown before the year is even over.

But rushing into the new year doesn’t guarantee a fresh start. Sometimes, it just carries our burnout into January.

Yes, we know. January is not the start of a New Year. Anyone who has done the tiniest bit of research knows that a real new year starts in the spring, when everything is reborn, not in the dead of winter. Stay with me tho.

We’ve all experienced or witnessed the last-minute scramble of trying to summarize the year without fully processing it: trying to complete a weight loss program, write a book, or achieve financial goals in just 10 days. Office parties, school events, family gatherings, all crammed together to see who can win the most before January first.

It can feel like we’re running from something. Perhaps a feeling of not having done “enough,” maybe comparison, and maybe the belief that value is measured by productivity.

It’s already happening with Black Friday sales. As you may have noticed, I rarely have one. I have nothing against them, and I am sure I’ll have something special in the future. Maybe even next year. But for now, it just all feels so exhausting.

I’M TIRED YA’LL.

If you are also tired, remember there is nothing wrong with slowing down at a time when everyone is speeding up. If you are a nature person like me, you know nothing blooms all year long. We were born from the Earth, yet we move opposite to it.

While humans rush to prove their year was meaningful to other flawed humans, nature is slowing down for the winter months. Animals are hibernating, finding ways to escape the cold, and trees have shed their leaves, with plants stopping growth to conserve energy. Even the soil rests, with nutrients being regenerated under frost and snow.

Meanwhile, my neighbor blows his leaves every morning. Poor thing. I want so badly to tell him they are just going to fall again. Let them leaves alone. They are doing what they are supposed to do and helping the soil in the process.

On this side of the Earth, humans accelerate and accomplish as much as possible before the final countdown. But for other living things?

For them, this is a period of rest and preparation for spring.

Slowing down isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing what matters with intention.

When we slow down, we reclaim time.

We notice the beauty in ordinary moments, and we greet the “new year” with clarity rather than exhaustion.

Instead of rushing to create a version of ourselves that looks good on paper, we can walk grounded, nourished, and whole.

The end of the year is not a deadline.

It’s a doorway.

Walk through it gently.

Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews – Sick by Christa Wojciechowski

Title: Sick

Author: Christa Wojciechowski

Publisher: Blood Bound Books

Genre: Medical Thriller, Psychological Fiction

Published: October 14, 2025

Pages: 282 pages

Susan Branch is in a different kind of prison. She is a prisoner of her husband’s illnesses. From broken bones, surgeries, rashes, and medications she sometimes steals from her job as a medical clerk of a podiatrist, Susan is forced to take care of her ailing husband. John is diagnosed with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, a complicated blood disorder, and for Susan, “In sickness and in health” takes on a literal meaning.

“Medications to give, wounds to clean, bed pans to empty, and food to serve.” (pg. 20) Taking care of John has become Susan’s life, going to work her only reprieve before returning to a home where she is locked inside the unsanitary cell of her and John’s bedroom. 

As the story unfolds, John begins to feel less like a husband and more like a helpless child trapped in a man’s body. Susan reads to him until her voice cracks, feeds him baby food, hums lullabies meant to soothe infants, and speaks to him like a mother coaxing a toddler to behave, calling him a ‘good boy.’

John pouts, sulks, and whines when things don’t go his way, and Susan seems to shrink a little more each day, her life orbiting entirely around John’s frailty. She is no longer a wife, not even quite a woman anymore, but a nurse, a mother, a prisoner in her own home.

My version of John and Susan using Chatgpt Sora, lol.

As the story progresses, we learn more about John Branch’s history, his upbringing, and his perspective on life. Readers gain insight into how John Branche’s response to the trauma of his childhood has influenced his adult decisions. When I read this story years ago, I said he was retarded. However, this progeny of old money is not retarded at all. John is quite the mastermind and narcissist with a sophisticated way of manipulating those around him. John does not believe his actions are wrong. He thinks we are all guided by our natural instincts. Speaking of nature, the author plays well with irony and karma. 

This story is well-written and fleshed out. The more you read, the more is revealed. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, there are more layers of the onion to peel off. The author keeps you on your toes, and the more I read, the more I found myself imagining watching an episode of American Horror Story.

Psychological fiction might just be my new favorite genre. I love twists and things that make me go “Whaatt??”

There are parts of the story where I felt sorry for Susan, and parts when I didn’t. Is she a prisoner, or is she also sick? Or, as John would say, are we all just a little sick?

 

“Most of us hide it so deep within that we can convince ourselves it doesn’t exist, while it gestates like a mutant embryo. But you can detect it in everyone. You can sniff it out. You can see it in people’s eyes when they think no one is watching them. There are tells—religion, porn addiction, smoking, or something as innocent as nail biting. Anything to distract themselves from the beast slumbering inside.”

– John Branch

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Ratings

  • Plot Movement / Strength: 5/5
  • Entertainment Factor: 4/5
  • Characterization: 5/5
  • Authenticity / Believable: 5/5
  • Thought Provoking: 5/5

Overall: 5/5

Sick is Available Now on Amazon

My Review Series is Open Again for a Limited Time.

Apply here

Due to the high demand, you must apply based on the instructions provided at the link. Please do not send anything other than what is specified.

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Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews is a reputable review service that features writers from around the world, including both traditionally and independently published authors. We are listed on Kindlepreneur as a top-tier book review blog and on Reedsy as one of their vetted active book blogs that provide insightful, excellent book reviews.

*Books are read in the order they are received.

It Could Easily Be You

When I was ten years old, my family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just months after learning to walk again after the car accident. It was the only time we did not live in Chicago during my childhood.

Shortly after moving into a big, beautiful home, we were evicted. With only a few family members in the state who decided we could not live with them, my mother and her three daughters went to a woman’s shelter. My brother was welcomed to stay with an older cousin, but she didn’t have room for the girls.

I’ve gone days without food, months without a roof, and years without the kind of nourishment most people take for granted. So watching people mock families who are about to lose their SNAP benefits isn’t just sad — it’s cruel, and it reminds me how easily empathy gets lost in comfort.

In a matter of days, many American families face the risk of losing their food stamp benefits as the Trump Administration intends to cut payments, affecting about 42 million individuals across the nation. What people are feeling and witnessing is not about lazy parents who are not working to put food on the table. This is about a trash economy that has forced even the hardest-working families to rely on assistance. You might not need it today, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need it tomorrow.

Before the stock market crash of October 1929, there was a time of optimism. Many families prospered as cars and new technology grew. People did not expect to go to their banks and be locked out without warning. Families didn’t expect that they would have to stand in bread lines. It happened suddenly, and it could happen to you, too.

“The loss of SNAP benefits leads to food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition, which are associated with numerous negative health outcomes in children, such as poor concentration, decreased cognitive function, fatigue, depression, and behavioral problems.”

– Melissa Quinn, CBS News

My cousin put it perfectly on Facebook:

“Food stamps fed all of us. Medicaid paid them hospital bills. WIC kept formula in our baby’s bottles. Free lunch stopped our stomachs from growlin in class. The projects gave most of us a roof when we ain’t have one. Financial Aid got a lot of ya’ll them degrees you flexin now. We’ve all had help at some point, so quit looking down on folks still getting it. You just forgot what struggle felt like. Don’t get too high up…the ground still waiting if you fall.”

– Tiff McCormick, Facebook Post

Considering the Women in Your Life

This scene is hilarious. This man cried cause she ain’t want to give him none. Pure comedy!!

I was watching Love Is Blind. The show is pure comedy for me. I really do feel sorry for anyone who takes it seriously. It seems they intentionally cast such young people whose common sense ain’t kicked in all the way yet.

Cause love is not blind. Not even a little bit.

One of the men, Edmond, who is 29, mentioned how distant one of the women was from her man. He told his fiancé, KB (also 29), he didn’t think the woman was as close to her man, being she was distant at the pool party.

“It couldn’t have been she was on her period?” KB asked.

“Oh,” said Edmond as if someone had pulled on the chain to a lamp and the light just came on, “She was on her period?”

“Yes,” said KB. “Just started today.”

He looked surprised, as if KB had just given him the secrets to the universe. I chuckled a bit. Yea. Women get those sometimes.

Then, I had a thought.

Women go through so much that men never have to think about.

When I am planning a vacation, for example, I make sure it’s not the week of my cycle. And when I am on my menstrual cycle, I try to do as little work as possible.

Fortunately for me, I don’t work a 9-5. I work from home and create my own schedule. I am blessed to lie in bed all day if I am cramping, but not all women have this freedom.

Comedian KevOnStage joked about this recently, saying, “Women really be going through everyday life sometimes bleeding profusely. Can you imagine everyday tasks, but blood in addition to everyday life? Like, I’m stuck in traffic, and she’s stuck in traffic, but she’s bleeding profusely. Can you imagine having to come to a parent-teacher conference bleeding profusely?”

He overused the word “profusely,” but the core of the message is true. A woman can literally be working her job, picking up her children from school, grocery shopping, or stopping by the bank while bleeding profusely, and no one would ever know.

This post ain’t about periods, though.

This is about all the things women go through that rarely get considered, whether that’s menstrual cycles, pregnancy, labor, and birth, mothering, wifeing, battling oppressive systems, and any other struggle women endure that men do not always have to.

October is PAIL Month

Speaking of which, October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and it recognizes women who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, ectopic pregnancy, abortion or termination for medical reasons, and the death of a newborn.

This month, you can do your part by educating yourself on PAIL, sharing on social media, supporting the women in your life who have experienced pregnancy loss, joining local remembrance events like walks or vigils (remembrance day is 10/15), donating to relevant organizations, or simply wearing pink and blue to show solidarity.

And the next time a woman is being distant or mean or feeling some kind of way, consider what she might be battling just to get through the day, and give her a little grace.

Over on Substack, we are highlighting Mary Francis Hill Coley, the Black midwife who delivered over 3,000 babies. You can read it here.

Black History Month UK

September walked out of here like she had somewhere to be, and October is strolling in with hella causes, from Breast Cancer Awareness Month to World Mental Health Day (10/10), to PAIL: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. (We gotta come back to this one!)

Additionally, October is Black History Month in the UK, and since I haven’t seen many people in the US discuss it, let’s do so.

If you didn’t already know, October marks Black History Month in the United Kingdom and was first celebrated in October 1987 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. (1838-1988)

The observation of October as Black History Month had its beginnings in programs and priorities of the Ethnic Minorities Unit (EMU) of the Greater London Council (GLC), and by the Principal Race Relations Adviser and Head of the Unit, Ansel Wong.

But it was Akyaaba Addai-Sebo who took it to new heights. Addai-Sebo came to the UK from Ghana to seek refuge from political persecution in 1984. Like the founder of Black History Month in America (Dr. Carter G. Woodson), Addai-Sebo wanted to challenge racism and celebrate the history and achievements of his people.

But that’s not all.

Akyaaba’s chief inspiration was young people. He says one of the reasons the celebration is in October is to appeal to children returning to school from summer break. According to one story, Akyaaba encountered a distraught mother who complained that her son (whom she had named after Marcus Garvey) asked her why he couldn’t be white.

“The inspiration for Black History Month came from an incident that happened at the GLC where I worked as the Co-ordinator of Special Projects. A colleague of mine, a woman, came to work one morning, looking very downcast and not herself. I asked her what the matter was, and she confided to me that the previous night, when she was putting her son Marcus to bed, he asked her, ‘Mum, why can’t I be white?’

A young Akyaaba Addai-Sebo

He goes on to say:

“So when this incident with Marcus took place in London, it dawned on me that something had to happen here in Britain. I was very familiar with black history month in America, and thought that something like that had to be done here in the UK, because if this was the fountainhead of colonialism, imperialism and racism, and despite all the institutions of higher learning and research and also the cluster of African embassies, you could still find a six year old boy being confused about his identity even though his mother had tried to correct it at birth.”

– Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, www.crer.org.uk

Why It Matters

Although the overwhelming majority of enslaved Blacks were transported to the Caribbean and South America, not just North America, many Americans are still not familiar with our history in other parts of the world.

For example, the English ship that brought the first recorded enslaved Blacks to the American colonies was called The White Lion and arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, on August 20, 1619. However, we were also already being enslaved by other nations, such as being brought to Puerto Rico by Spanish conquerors as early as 1509.

“People from African and Caribbean backgrounds have been a fundamental part of British history for centuries. However, campaigners believe their value and contribution to society are often overlooked, ignored, and distorted.” (trisha@whatson.uk.com)