Jocelyn Reekie

The year is 1857. Thirteen-year-old Tess Macqueen lives in Castle Dunharbar, Scotland. Her life changes dramatically when two devastating events occur: first, her mother dies unexpectedly; then her Uncle Hammond, who owns Castle Dunharbar, decides to sell his inheritance, forcing Tess' family off the land they've farmed for years. Tess and her father are given passage to the New World aboard a ship bound from Liverpool, England, to Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
From here, everything in Tess' previously settled life changes. On board ship Tess meets girls of her own age who are too poor to ride above deck, and a fascinating Gold Rush prospector named Jock. On Vancouver Island, she and her father struggle to make a new home in a strange, sometimes forbidding, sometimes exotic world. In gripping detail, Tess tells the dramatic story of one young woman's journey to a new land and towards adulthood. Here is classic historical fiction by an immensely talented writer who brings a fateful voyage across the ocean, and the fascinating frontier of North America in the 1850s, vividly to life.