Between 1869 and 1948, more than 100,000 British children were shipped to Canada as farm labourers and domestic servants. Around four million Canadians are descended from them. Most of those children never spoke of it again.
Liverpool, 1926. Evie Gracen is fourteen. Her sister Sylvie is ten. They are put on a ship together and separated within a week of landing — Evie to a remote Ontario farm, Sylvie to a girls' institution a hundred and thirty miles away.
Before they are taken apart, Evie promises she will come back for her.
For eight years Sylvie writes, and nothing ever comes back. Neither girl knows the letters are being stopped. Neither knows how close the answer has been the whole time.
They will see each other once more. It will last eighteen minutes.
England, present day. Archivist Eliza Hartley is clearing her grandmother Evelyn's house when she finds a sealed letter at the bottom of a trunk — unposted, never opened, addressed to a woman nobody in the family has ever heard of.
The trail leads Eliza to Canada, into intercepted letters, falsified records and institutional silences that outlived everyone who made them. It also leads her to people still living who would rather it stayed buried.
And finding the truth turns out not to be the same as having the right to tell it.
A novel about sisterhood, inherited silence, and the human need to be remembered by name.
For readers of Before We Were Yours, Orphan Train, and The Nightingale.
Genre: Historical
Liverpool, 1926. Evie Gracen is fourteen. Her sister Sylvie is ten. They are put on a ship together and separated within a week of landing — Evie to a remote Ontario farm, Sylvie to a girls' institution a hundred and thirty miles away.
Before they are taken apart, Evie promises she will come back for her.
For eight years Sylvie writes, and nothing ever comes back. Neither girl knows the letters are being stopped. Neither knows how close the answer has been the whole time.
They will see each other once more. It will last eighteen minutes.
England, present day. Archivist Eliza Hartley is clearing her grandmother Evelyn's house when she finds a sealed letter at the bottom of a trunk — unposted, never opened, addressed to a woman nobody in the family has ever heard of.
The trail leads Eliza to Canada, into intercepted letters, falsified records and institutional silences that outlived everyone who made them. It also leads her to people still living who would rather it stayed buried.
And finding the truth turns out not to be the same as having the right to tell it.
A novel about sisterhood, inherited silence, and the human need to be remembered by name.
For readers of Before We Were Yours, Orphan Train, and The Nightingale.
Genre: Historical
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