BooksWeLoveInc dedicated this series to the immigrants male and female, who left their homes and families, crossed oceans and endured unimaginable hardships in order to settle in the Canadian wilderness and build new lives in a rough and untamed county.
May 1817
Mr Edmund Hewitt. Whose voice Rose once thought was the most melodic in the world finsda her. He wants what he claims is his, their daughter. If Rose refuses to give him the child he never acknowledged, he will ruin Rose financially and let slip about her questionable morals. To distance herself from him Rose flees to Barkerville with Hannah.
Five months earlier hard-up Viscount Harrison St John is about to enter an arranged marriage to save the family fortune. His bride to be jilts him at the altar. Harrison decides to go to Burkeville in British Columbia to join the gold rush.
On her way to Barkerville the stage coach breaks down. Although Rose is suspicious of Harrison, who offers to give them a lift in his wagon, she is forced to accept because Hannah fell over and gashed her leg.
From then on, fiercely independent Rose, who claims to be a widow, and Harrison’s paths cross.
Throughout the novel Ms Westerling builds conflict, tension and word pictures.
Rose hadn’t expected Barkerville to be “the jumble of wooden mostly single storey buildings tottering on stilts alongside a wide muddied creek. Surrounded by steep hills stripped bare of trees.
The road through town was in poor shape, rutted and puddled with patches of drying muck. In consideration for pedestrians, raised wooden walkways fronted every building like pleated skirts.”
This talented author captures the challenges and hardships faced by the miners and women who must to earn a living. Destitute and alone Rose has to forge a new life for herself and her daughter, a life in which Harrison seems to have no part.
(reviewed the day of purchase)