Chasing Stolen Gold

How a Ten-Year Quest to Find Lost Gold Led to a Spiritual Awakening

Non-Fiction - Memoir
258 Pages
Reviewed on 09/20/2022
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    Book Review

Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite

Chasing Stolen Gold: How a Ten-Year Quest to Find Lost Gold Led to a Spiritual Awakening is a work of non-fiction in the memoir and self-discovery subgenres. It is best suited to the mature adult reading audience owing to some use of explicit language and it was penned by Camp McKinney Jimmy. In this thrilling recollection of the lessons learned during a decade-long quest, we follow our author on the hunt for the lost gold bars of Camp McKinney, following in the footsteps of the dangerous thief Matthew Roderick. As the present-day path converges with that of history, the author makes spiritual and emotional discoveries about his own life that set him on a whole new path toward resolution.

One of the features that I loved most about this work was the clear passion and honesty which the author has for his subject. Beginning in the grand old tradition of curiosity and the pursuit of adventure, Camp McKinney Jimmy has a way with words that flows from the heat of the action through the pages of history, and then back around to resonant emotional conclusions that you never see coming, but settle quite perfectly into the atmosphere of the tale as a whole. I also really enjoyed the descriptive quality of both place and person that brought Roderick’s mysterious cut-throat tendencies to life, and I found the piece as educational as it was stirring. I certainly recommend Chasing Stolen Gold to readers of true-life adventure tales and fans of spiritual, soul-searching writing everywhere.

Jamie Michele

Chasing Stolen Gold: How a Ten-Year Quest to Find Lost Gold Led to a Spiritual Awakening by Camp McKinney Jimmy is a memoir and a chronicle of the author's unique experiences in the wild as an amateur naturalist and a gold hunter. The author begins with a detailed account of his personal life as it pertains to prior relationships and their evolution, and how they factored into that particular point in his journey, the home that he occupied, and his expeditions into nature in search of wealth and fame. The book then backpedals into a fictional account of two 19th-century men, one named Mathew Roderick and the other named James Monaghan, whose stories intertwine with the author in profoundly unusual ways. As Camp McKinney Jimmy continues his treasure hunts, both his health and relationship suffered, but what might have felt like the end for others happened to be the beginning of something much more enlightening than he could have imagined.

Camp McKinney Jimmy provides an honest account of what he has experienced and its impact on him in Chasing Stolen Gold. It's a memoir with an interesting set of viewpoints and possibly the first I've read about a contemporary treasure hunter, but certainly the only one I've read where the spiritually transcendent quality of nature is explored as much as the areas he scoured looking for gold. The parts I found most interesting were the fictionally recreated backstory of Roderick and I do believe the writing elevates in this format. As for his entirely factual retelling, the narrative does get bogged down frequently by loquaciousness and more information than a reader would need. Still, what he describes when the pacing resumes at a faster pace is fascinating, and I was particularly delighted by the photographs that gave a much better understanding of the places he describes. There are two primary audiences that I believe will embrace this memoir. The first are those in the gold and treasure hunting communities who will likely appreciate the nod to a pursuit that they share with him. It may also get them to look beyond the ground at their feet and see more than soil concealing treasure. The second is the author's family, who will no doubt cherish this memoir as a treasure and as a time capsule of their collective history.