An I witness novel

Tom's job as an assistant to Captain John Ericsson, the inventor of the Monitor, makes him a target of Confederate spies.

Determined to find his nineteen-year-old uncle and best friend, Jesse, who left for Colorado to find enough gold to pay the mortgage and save the family's Iowa farm, twelve-year-old Early Whittcomb joins up with a barber, his wife, and his daughter on a wagon train heading for the gold fields near Pike's Peak in 1858.