Nellie: An Imagined History (fiction chapbook, Little Books Collective, Lunenburg, NS, September 30, 2024)
On the Liverpool docks in 1885, eleven-year-old Nellie says goodbye to her mother forever. She’s bound for Quebec, Canada on the SS Circassian, along with seventy-two other destitute “British Home Children.” NELLIE: An Imagined History is historical fiction written in the sharp, hopeful voice of Nellie as she crosses the Atlantic and takes her first steps in a land both harsh and wondrous.
To purchase, visit Livres Lac Brome in Knowlton, Quebec, or Block Shop Books in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, or click here.
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Nellie imagines the harrowing and barely known history of the British Home Children, ‘waifs and strays’ sent to Canada as indentured labour in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Through lyrical, evocative prose, Tricia Snell takes us on an ocean voyage and into colonial Canada, conveying the children’s experience through Nellie’s eyes and suggesting how they helped each other adapt and survive.
If you were a Home Child, you didn’t talk about it. Now Tricia Snell brings their story—and an essential piece of Canadian history—to life in this beautiful book.
—Sharon English, author of Night in the World, Zero Gravity, and Uncomfortably Numb
The opening sea crossing is so beautifully rendered, and Nellie’s voice so strong as the story unfolds, that I immediately wanted to go with her on her adventures.
—Judith Barrington, author of Virginia’s Apple, Lifesaving, and Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art