I was so confused. I don’t think I’m smart enough for this story.. I love stories told in verse so I expected to love this book but it wasn’t for me. No matter how slow I read the words I just did not get it unfortunately. If you really enjoy poetry I think you should give this one a shot!

Beautiful poetry and a fascinating look into history that is very often not taught and generally overlooked.

La verdad que no me gustó mucho, por ahi fueron los modismos que se utilizaron ya que es una recopilacion de una autora de hace años AÑOS. Fue tan corto y a la vez tan confuso que me costó leerlo, y mucho.

The Home Child

This piece is nothing short of magical albeit haunting in many way. A lyrical journey based on Berry’s great aunt, Eliza Showel, and her immigration from Britain’s Middlemore Children’s Emigration Homes to Cape Breton. The dialect and emotion made for such an engrossing read, I couldn’t put it down. A few of my favorite lines:

“A girl is a raindrop disappearing into the lake’s beaten gold.

A girl is ivy in the arms of an indifferent tree, begging to be held.”

And

“And when I sit here in this chair
and think I have lived my whole life
to never have a home,
I send myself back to that hour in the woods
when he first took my fingers
and touched them to a leaf.”

In 1889, a law was passed in England that allowed the transfer of orphaned children to Canada as indentured servants. Most were between the ages of seven and fourteen but some were as young as toddlers. They were called home children. In this beautiful book, Liz Berry tells the story of one such child, Eliza Stowell.

Eliza is sent to a farmer's house whose wife is bed bound with illness. She does all the cleaning and cooking, laundry, feeding of livestock and tends to the lady of the house. She works from before dawn until there is no more light, only to fall into her bed and sleep, exhausted, until the next day. It is a hard life where Eliza has nothing to call her own. The family even changes her name to Lizzie.

Then a boy arrives, another indentured servant, another home child. He is a few years older than Eliza and they form at first a friendship, then a love. His are the only tender looks and touches Eliza ever gets but they are discovered and her love is sent away.

Liz Berry is a prize-winning poet and she has told this story in verse. The poems tell of the voyage over, the longing for Eliza's mother and brothers, her loneliness and her joy in finding a love. It tells the story of the home children, a program that sent over one hundred thousand children to another country. It is estimated that ten percent of Canada's population are descendants of those who were forcibly emigrated. The poems are written with use of dialect and they bring Eliza to life in a way that few characters are drawn. Eliza is based on Liz Berry's great aunt, Eliza, who was a participant in the story and lost to the family that remained behind. This gorgeous book is recommended for literary fiction readers.

At the beginning of this poetry collection, Liz Berry explains that it is "loosely based" on her great aunt Eliza's life experience with a focus on her migration. Between 1860 and 1960, "Home Children" were forced to migrate from Brain to Canada to act as servants and live lifes of labor, including Berry's aforementioned family member.

Born in 1908, Eliza was just 12 years old when traveling from her home country of England to Canada, more specifically the region of Nova scotia. The poems trace her journey from her home to cross the sea to the Children's Emigration Home in Birmingham, and into her new life as a maid for an elderly invalid. Life is harsh and isolating until a boy named Daniel arrives at the McPhail farm. The stories within tell an aching story of the loss of innocence and girlhood in the backdrop of an entirely unknown new world, and yet there is a thread of hope throughout.