Diamond Fever! by Steve Sheinkin & Jon Chad

     Yahoo for the newest book by my favorite non-fiction author Steve Sheinkin! And a nice bonus to have some comics added throughout by artist Jon Chad.  Diamond Fever! A True Crime Story in the Wild West tells the real story of a giant diamond discovery that happened in the western United States beginning just after the Civil War, in the late 1860s. The transcontinental railroad had just been completed, allowing cross-country travel in about a week for the first time ever. This allowed the stories two main characters to do what they did in a very believable way. Of course, there was no Internet, nor television, so traveling and communicating long distances was very new, or not possible, at least not in the ways we are used to today, and this also played into the story - the setting was almost its own character in this tale!

    According to this book, two men claimed to have found a diamond field in the western part of the country, a wide range of barren land full of diamonds and rubies...although they wouldn't tell anyone exactly where it was. At this time in history, the gold rush was not terribly old yet, so many people had high hopes of getting rich quickly, by traveling west and finding gold, mostly. But what if a diamond field actually existed? How rich could someone get from such a discovery? In the course of a few years, many people would try to find out.

    Sheinkin is the author of many non-fiction stories, several of them award winners, and every single one of them exciting to read! I know, because this literate pup has read every single one! His books read like some of the best fiction books I have read, with an added bonus of learning a lot about a particular subject, usually embedded in United States history somewhere. Diamond Fever! is no exception - I got it from my local library Saturday and finished reading it today - Monday! I couldn't wait to read the next page! I hope you find it as enticing as I did...I recommend it (or any Sheinkin book)! 5 paws!