The Coves

San Francisco, 1849: a place gripped by gold fever, swarming with desperate men come to seek their fortune. Among them are former convicts, Australians quick to seize control in a town without masters, a town for the taking. Into this world steps an Australian boy in search of his mother. Just twelve years old, and all alone in a time of opportunism, loyalty and violent betrayal, Samuel Bellamy must learn to become one of the Sydney Coves if he is to survive. San Francisco, 1849. The hills are swarming with desperate men from all over the world, come to seek their fortune in the grip of yellow fever. In their wake come the opportunists, not least of whom are the Australians, many of them former convicts who are quick to seize control in a lawless world. This group of Australians, headed by the standover man Thomas Keane, are known as The Coves. Enter twelve-year-old Samuel Bellamy, formerly of the Swan River Colony, lately of Van Dieman's Land, in search of his mother who, last he heard, has gone to join the molly-houses in California. Sydney-town, San Francisco, is a world of opportunism, loyalty and violent betrayal, and Samuel must learn to be a man if he is to survive Follows the experiences of twelve-year-old Sam Bellamy as he stows away on a ship to America in search of his prostitute mother, lands in the crime-infested city of San Francisco in 1850, and is adopted by two ruffians living in the Australian neighborhood of Sydney Cove