Charlotte

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Charlotte is a true story of tragedy and affirmation, a moving drama of
the aftermath of war and the hardships faced by those uprooted by it.

Charlotte Haines was 10 in 1783, the year in which the American revolt
against Britain ended, with thousands of Loyalists leaving America for
Canada. Some trekked on foot through wilderness terrain—a saga that
this award-winning author has dramatized elsewhere. Charlotte traveled
with her aunt and uncle and beloved cousins by ship to the harbor of
Saint John, Nova Scotia. The divided loyalties brought on by the war had
shattered many families. When Charlotte disobeyed her stubborn father, a
rebel sympathizer, by visiting her Loyalist cousins to bid them goodbye,
he ordered her to share their exile. She never saw her own family again.


The child’s love for her cousins and her inability to choose between
them and her own family is brought to life through both text and
large-format illustrations. The fine paintings by artist Brian
Deines—this is his first picture book for children—illuminate both
the historical setting and the characters.

Janet Lunn’s afterword notes that Charlotte grew up near Saint John,
married a fellow Loyalist, and had 15 children and 111 grandchildren,
one of them Sir Samuel Tilley, a Father of Confederation in 1867. Highly
recommended.