Meyers' Creek

Sheree Haughian is an elementary-school teacher-librarian in
Orangeville, Ontario.

Family sagas make popular fiction, particularly when they’re set in
times of adversity. Meyers’ Creek is the fourth book in the Gemini
series about a United Empire Loyalist family that settled in the
Belleville area in the aftermath of the American Revolution.

The novel focuses on the adventures of 19-year-old Mary Meyers, a young
woman in the Scarlett O’Hara tradition of spunky heroines. Anxious for
a wider range of experience than that generally available to women in
the 1780s, Mary will not be left behind when her father and brothers
journey back to Albany, New York, to raid their original homestead for
family keepsakes. Not content to be a hearthbound “Martha,” Mary
longs to own and farm a parcel of land of her very own in the new
country. While rebelling against the traditional female role, Mary also
continues to deal with the distaff realities of homesteading in Upper
Canada. She delivers a baby in an emergency; is frugal with food during
the hungry winter of 1788; and falls in love with the man who chooses to
wed her frailer sister.

The historical note at the end of Meyers’ Creek informs the reader
that this novel is not just airspun fiction. Crook is a descendant of
Mary Meyers, and, with the exception of some date changes, the events
described in the book are true. Even if the novel does not compel
readers to seek out earlier novels in the series, it will surely inspire
writers to delve into their old family albums for similar stories of
adventure and courage. Recommended.