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Short-listed for the 1999 Silver Birch Award
Eleven-year-old Ellen finds herself wrongly accused of stealing while selling flowers on the Liverpool docks. In her escape she becomes a stowaway aboard a steamship bound for Canada, an unwilling member of a band of orphans headed for new families on the Prairies. Adopted by the Aitkens, a family on a Manitoba homestead, she soon lands herself at the centre of a number of calamities, unexpectedly learning about rural life in the New World and the value of family ties, both those forged in blood and those forged in trust.
... a detailed and interesting picture of life on an 1880s prairie farm.
— Barbara Greenwood
Horne paints a very credible picture of homestead life in the 1880s in rural Manitoba, its one-room schools, the flurry of activity at threshing time, the battles with blizzards and hailstorms.
— Glen Huser
Written for the eight to 12-year-old audience, Horne's novel vividly portrays Canadian life in the late 1800s.
— Sheryl Salloum
Horne writes a suspenseful novel.
The characters are well drawn, the feelings of despair, abandonment, hope, and joy realistically portrayed.
— Gernot R. Wieland
Constance Horne is the author of numerous books. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.