This is not a book you would want to read if you were feeling low and looking for something to lift your spirits. It's a bit like reading the Book of Job from the Bible as the trials and tribulations that beset the young girl in the story are harsh and unrelenting. It is set in the time when the earliest settlers were making their way across the Atlantic to America, and the girl in the story is an abandoned Dutch orphan who had been sent to a minister's family to work as a servant when she was still only four years old. After a few years of working in the household, the girl is told by her mistress that the family would be closing up the house and sailing to America and they would be taking her with them. It was a dreadful journey where the ship was almost lost in a storm and when they arrived at their destination the Dutch settlers were already starving and unhappy to have more mouths to feed. I won't give away the circumstances, but after a while in the new land, the...