Dragon's Gate — Laurence Yep

America -- "the Land of the Golden Mountain"
When an accident forces Otter to flee his home in China, he is more than ready to join his father and uncle in California, where they are working on the great transcontinental railroad. But the America that Otter finds is not what he had expected. The Chinese workers are little more than slaves, driven to achieve the seemingly impossible task of chiseling a path for the railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

But worst of all, Otter is devastated by the discovery that Uncle Foxfire is neither the hero nor the legend that Otter thought he was. His dreams of returning to China shattered, Otter must now fight for his own survival. Brutal working conditions, bitter cold, and even more bitter disappointment finally drive Otter to undertake a desperate mission that could very well be his last.