• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 7 to 12

Faced with financial ruin and the loss of her good name, Rose Chadwick decides to make a new start for herself and her young daughter Hannah in the rough and tumble gold rush town of Barkerville, British Columbia. However, making a new life is not so easy when it’s built on lies. And, long suppressed emotions within her are stirred when she meets a handsome young Englishman.

Stuart R. West is a lifelong resident of Kansas, which he considers both a curse and a blessing. It's a curse because...well, it's Kansas. But it's great because…well, it’s Kansas. Lots of cool, strange and creepy things happen in the Midwest, and Stuart takes advantage of them in his work. Call it “Kansas Noir”.  Stuart writes thrillers tinged with horror and horror tinged with thriller, both for adult and young adult audiences.  Ghosts of Gannaway is the first of his novels to be published by Books We Love.  Stuart spent 25 years in the corporate sector and now writes full time. He’s married to a professor of pharmacy (who greatly appreciates the fact being a full-time writer allows him to cook dinner for her every night) and has a 22 year old daughter who’s still deciding what to do with her life. But that's okay. It took him twenty-five years to figure that out.

A.M. Westerling's profile page

A.M. Westerling paints the way of life in a BC gold rush town with a vivid brush. Her characters leap off the page and take on a life of their own. A not to be missed read.

Brandywine Reviews

Canadian Brides

by !pen pusher!

Barkerville Beginnings

Canadian Historical Brides (Yukon) 20/09/2017

Book Three

BooksWeLoveInc dedicated this series to the immigrants male and female, who left their homes and families, crossed oceans and endured unimaginable hardships in order to settle in the Canadian wilderness and build new lives in a rough and untamed county.

May 1817

Mr Edmund Hewitt. Whose voice Rose once thought was the most melodic in the world finsds her. He wants what he claims is his, their daughter. If Rose refuses to give him the child he never acknowledged, he will ruin Rose financially and let slip about her questionable morals. To distance herself from him Rose flees to Barkerville with Hannah.

Five months earlier hard-up Viscount Harrison St John is about to enter an arranged marriage to save the family fortune. His bride to be jilts him at the altar. Harrison decides to go to Barkeville in British Columbia to join the gold rush.

On her way to Barkerville the stage coach breaks down. Although Rose is suspicious of Harrison, who offers to give them a lift in his wagon, she is forced to accept because Hannah fell over and gashed her leg.

From then on, fiercely independent Rose, who claims to be a widow, and Harrison’s paths cross.

Throughout the novel Ms Westerling builds conflict, tension and word pictures.

Rose hadn’t expected Barkerville to be “the jumble of wooden mostly single storey buildings tottering on stilts alongside a wide muddied creek. Surrounded by steep hills stripped bare of trees.

The road through town was in poor shape, rutted and puddled with patches of drying muck. In consideration for pedestrians, raised wooden walkways fronted every building like pleated skirts.”

This talented author captures the challenges and hardships faced by the miners and women who must to earn a living. Destitute and alone Rose has to forge a new life for herself and her daughter, a life in which Harrison seems to have no part.

by Rosemary Morris