An Elephant Tree Christmas by Lynne Kositsky

Lynne's fiction has been nominated for the Geoffrey Bilson, White Pine, Golden Oak, Hackmatack Awards, in 2006 she won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Youth. Claire by Moonlight traces the journey of one girl, facing insurmountable odds, who will forever remain haunted by the ghosts of those she loved. Lynne Kositsky is an award-winning poet and the author of several novels in Penguin's Our Canadian Girl series, including Rachel: A Mighty Big Imagining, which won the White Raven Award. Lynne Kositsky paints a vivid portrait of the land, the Acadians, and a tragic chapter in history. There are traitors about but who are they? Is Sam one? Is Jacques? Most terrifying of all, is she? What danger does she court just by talking to him? Somehow Claire must make sense of it all before her home in Grand-Pré is changed forever. Grandmère, well she is Grandmère – always hard to please, never capable of a single word of praise, no matter how hard Claire works to provide for all of them.Īnd then there is Sam Douglass, handsome in his red coat and always paying attention to her. Claire’s brother, Jacques, is increasingly angry and suspicious of the British soldiers who seem to take an unnatural interest in the family’s daily routine.

Her father, long sickened by his wife’s behavior, barely finds the energy to fend for his ever-growing family. Her mother’s mental illness is a blot on the family name and Claire feels the brunt of it keenly. But her life is far from straightforward. In the summer of 1784 during a terrible riot, white de-listed soldiers destroyed the new houses in the black neighbourhood and drove the inhabitants out of town.Claire’s future should be simple and predictable and include all the normal expectations of a young Acadian woman. The house, their Maybe House, was a delight, but there was unrest in Shelburne. In the spring Titan built a wooden house for them in the small black area of Shelburne, a mostly white town, and the family moved. They spent their first winter in a cold and miserable pit-cabin, where Rachel's brother, Jem, was born.

There they joined Rachel's stepfather, Titan.

Rachel Sparrow moved to Birchtown, Nova Scotia, with her mother, Sukey. Many of these Loyalists were sent to Nova Scotia. They moved the ex-slaves, known as Black Loyalists, up to their remaining colonies. By 1783 the war was over and the British had lost. When the Revolutionary War began with American colonies, the British promised freedom to slaves who escaped to join them.

An Elephant Tree Christmas by Lynne Kositsky