Suddenly orphaned in March 1903, with no immediate family to care for them, 13-year-old Elspeth MacDonald and her four-year-old brother Robbie faced separation: She would be given work as a maid; he would be sent to an orphanage. Mindful of her dying mother’s admonition that they must stay together, Elspeth contrives to escape from their dreary Glasgow tenement and to fulfill her parents’ dreams of emigrating to western Canada