The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Zhang, C Pam. How Much of These Hills Is Gold. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

The novel begins in the year 1862. Lucy, age 12, and her sister Sam, age 11, standing over the body of their father (whom they call “Ba”). Their mother, who is also gone, once told them that the dead must be buried with silver coins to prevent the living from being haunted, so they visit the bank in hopes of getting a loan. When the banker calls them a racial slur, Sam pulls out Ba's gun and shoots, but it misfires. They run home, pack their father's body in a trunk, steal the local schoolteacher's horse, and take to the hills surrounding the mining town in which they live. They quarrel looking for a suitable place to bury the body. Sam was always closer to Ba, while Lucy had a stronger relationship with their mother (whom they call “Ma”). The siblings come to a town called Sweetwater; Lucy wants to live there, but Sam (who styles herself as a boy) wishes to stay in the hills and become a wanderer and prospector like Ba. They separate.

Part II flashes back three years. The family moves into their shack in the mining town, and Ma draws a tiger in the house as a protective symbol, a ritual brought over from her homeland. Ba works in the local coal mine, but the family is impoverished. When they discover Ma is pregnant, Ba begins working long hours at night. He reveals that, after years of prospecting around the Western territory, he has finally struck gold. He permits Lucy and Sam to start going to school, where they meet the instructor, Teacher Leigh. However, both are immediately expelled when Sam gets into a fight. Later, Ma and Lucy visit the teacher's house to ask for Lucy to be reinstated. Teacher Leigh dismisses Lucy, but he is charmed by Ma's beauty and ultimately acquiesces, even agreeing to give Lucy private lessons. Lucy is enthralled by Teacher Leigh's stories from back East where he comes from and she becomes increasingly eager to please him. He begins writing about her family (whom he views as exotic simply because they are of Asian ethnicity) for inclusion in the monograph he is working on about the Western territory.

Having amassed a significant amount of gold, Ba tells the family he is going to buy a plot of land for them to live on, but Ma convinces him to buy tickets for the family to return to her homeland instead. When Lucy tells Teacher Leigh they are moving away, he is angry that he will not be able to finish this section of his monograph. Lucy plans to bring a piece of gold to his house to impress him, but on the way she trips and falls. As she loses consciousness, she sees a man bend down and take the piece of gold. Just as the family prepares to depart the town, they are visited by two miners, who ransack the shack and steal all of their gold. Shortly thereafter, Ma gives birth to a stillborn baby. Ba tells Lucy that Ma died in childbirth.

In Part III, Ba's ghost speaks to Lucy about his earlier life, telling her he was born in the Western territory but orphaned as a baby. He was raised by Native Americans and he found his first piece of gold when he was 12. In adulthood, Ba was approached by a wealthy prospector who offered him a job. Because Ba was Asian, the prospector assumed he spoke the same language as the 200 immigrants the prospector had just brought over from across the ocean to build a railroad. Ba's job was to teach them English. Ma was one of the 200, and Ba fell in love with her instantly. When one of Ba's supervisors shot one of the immigrants, Ma demanded restitution. She conceived of a plan to set a fire that would kill them so that she and Ba could run away. However, the fire blazed uncontrollably and burned the building in which the 200 were living, killing them all. Ma was racked with guilt. Soon after, she became pregnant with Lucy. Ba tells Lucy that her mother did not die; she abandoned the family after the stillbirth.

In Part IV, Lucy is 17 years old and living in Sweetwater. She has a close friend, Anna, who is also a prospector's daughter, though Anna's family is wealthy. One day, Sam arrives in town; she is now living as a man and has been working under various prospectors. Lucy is sexually propositioned by Anna's fiance Charles, and when she tells Anna about this, Anna does not believe it. She implies that Charles would never be interested in Lucy because of her ethnicity. Sam and Lucy leave Sweetwater, but Sam has a large collection of gold and it becomes apparent that she is on the run from having stolen it. They arrive in a coastal city where they plan to purchase tickets on a ship to go to Ma's homeland. Sam takes Lucy to a brothel she often frequents that is owned by a prospector. On the morning they plan to depart, they are confronted by the prospector that Sam stole from. Lucy tells him that she will work in his brothel if he lets Sam go free. He agrees and Sam departs on the ship (believing that Lucy has only agreed to be the prospector's secretary). Lucy works in the brothel and eventually pays back Sam's debt. Once she has done so, she contemplates taking a ship to reunite with Sam, but decides to return to the hills, the land her father loved, instead.