choolgirl Marjory Thompson immigrates with her rambunctious family to Canada in 1904, her parents are convinced that fortune awaits in the flat farmland of Manitoba. Before long, the impatient Marjory realizes her parents have got it all wrong: nothing but hard work, loneliness, and boredom lie before them. Desperate to escape, Marjory takes one rural teaching post after another, scrimping and saving, until she can afford to attend university. After graduation, she is employed as a high school principal, a rare feat for a woman in the 1930s. What comes next, at the dawn of the feminist age, is not deserved success but a single act of terrible judgement that will haunt Marjory the rest of her life. With insight and imagination, Amy Boyes brings her great-grandmother's past alive in this tale of immigration, struggle, and the long reach of history.