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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.
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"Written for the eight to 12-year-old audience, Horne's novel vividly portrays Canadian life in the late 1800s."
Sheryl Salloum
Focus on Adoption
February 1, 2000
"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
The Edmonton Journal
December 2, 1998
"... a detailed and interesting picture of life on an 1880s prairie farm."
Barbara Greenwood
Quill and Quire
May 1, 1998
"Horne writes a suspenseful novel." "The characters are well drawn, the feelings of despair, abandonment, hope, and joy realistically portrayed."
Gernot R. Wieland
Books in Review
January 1, 2000