The Braid by Helen Frost

This one will definitely be making my best of 2006 list. I love
Helen Frost's work and this is certainly no exception. Having family
in Ireland, I have read much and heard much about the Irish Famine in
the 1850s. I haven't heard as much about the Scottish resettlements
of those days though. After reading this book, I now have to do a
bit of research on that situation. I loved this book!

Frost, Helen.
THE BRAID
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 0374309620
We often hear of the potato famine in Ireland and how the people were
forced off their land.
We don't often hear about what was happening in Scotland during the
same time period.
Families were being forced off their land so that wealthy land barons
could use the land for
grazing sheep. Families were often forced onto boats to Canada and
left their homes with little
more than the clothes on their backs. Jeannie and Sarah find
themselves in this situation. Their
family is leaving for Canada and have sold everything in order to
have money for the trip. But
Sarah runs away and hides so she doesn't have to go. Instead she and
her grandmother head out
to a tiny island that was home to her grandparents many years
before. Although life is hard in
Scotland, Jeannie and the rest of the family are in must dire
straights in Cape Breton. Father
and two of the daughters die on the voyage. This leave Jeannie, her
mother and her baby
brother trying to find a home in Canada. They face starvation,
homelessness and scorn from
locals on the way. Through it all, the sisters never stop thinking
about each other.

SUBJECTS: Sisters -- Fiction.
Family life -- Fiction.
Islands -- Fiction.
Mingulay (Scotland) -- History -- 19th
century -- Fiction.
Emigration and immigration -- Fiction.
Cape Breton Island (N.S.) -- History -- 19th
century -- Fiction.
Scotland -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction.
Canada -- History -- 1841-1867 -- Fiction.
Historical fiction.