This gripping book set in the 1870s tells the story of Sarah, a 12-year-old Manitoba girl with Icelandic roots. Sarah must go to Winnipeg, where she is to learn English and be a lady. Before she leaves, she thinks about stories of her family – how the native people of Sand River, the Cree, helped her grandparents survive their first year in Frog Bay by giving them food, and how her grandparents, in return, nursed and then respectfully buried a Cree family that had smallpox. Sarah wears a pendant that the Cree mother gave to Sarah’s grandmother; it connects her to the past.

But the pendant also has an important part to play in Sarah’s future. When her host family in Winnipeg exploits her and keeps her from going to school, help comes from some native people who see the pendant and recognize a friend. After much suffering, Sarah runs away and tries to return home. She is caught in a blizzard, but her Cree friends keep her safe. She later learns that these friends are not living; they died many years ago in the smallpox epidemic.

This is a haunting tale, skillfully written, and with a powerful ending. The reader quickly enters Sarah’s world, sharing her love for home, her isolation and loneliness in the big city, her wretchedness amid a cruel family, her desperation to return home to safety, and her relief when help comes. A fiction writer and professor of creative writing, W.D. Valgardson is of Icelandic origin, and has masterfully recreated a moment in early Canadian history, with a supernatural twist. Children over five, and the adults who read to them, will be captivated by Sarah’s story.

Award-winning artist Ian Wallace’s pencil, watercolour, and gouache illustrations add rich, subtle layers to the story. Colours are muted, and the images are filled with historical detail, movement, and emotion. The snow and cold are palpable. One is struck by Sarah’s youth, innocence, and beauty, especially in the Winnipeg scenes where these three qualities face major challenges.