A beautifully realized historical novel set at the turn of the twentieth century in New York's Hudson Valley, where a town of immigrant brickworkers is on the brink of disaster and a young Canadian woman, in a loveless marriage, struggles to find herself.

When duty to her father reduces Anne Beauvois, a sophisticated young Canadian woman, to farm drudgery, she escapes into a loveless marriage to an illiterate Irish brick-worker, Liam O’Connor. In Haverstraw, a town on the brink of disaster, she finds friends and discovers her inner strength.

This quietly beautiful novel tracks the fortunes and misfortunes of a young woman in search of selfhood. After her mother unexpectedly dies, Anne Beauvois must leave her aunt's elegant home in Quebec City to keep house for her brutish, illiterate father on his hardscrabble farm in New York State. Severely limited by early-twentieth-century gender constraints, she realizes her only escape is marriage. Hastily accepting a proposal from a callow young Irish bricklayer, she moves to the bustling river port city of Haverstraw, determined to forge a new life for herself. Having made a bad bargain in the marriage department, she pursues her own dreams and desires despite her husband's provincial ideas. When tragedy strikes the town, Anne's options are extended far beyond her initial expectations. Williams manages to effortlessly conjure up the tenor and the timbre of another time and place in the powerfully evocative debut novel.

For both YA and M audiences: for high-school students looking for a gentle historical read.

How vividly Margaret Williams re-creates the world of shops and boarding houses, clay pits and brick ovens that was Haverstraw, NY in the early 1900's! And she has a wonderfully compelling story to tell -- of deception and loss, self-discovery and love. You won't want to put it down.