This image is the cover for the book Dear Canada: A Sea of Sorrows, Dear Canada

Dear Canada: A Sea of Sorrows, Dear Canada

In the midst of the Irish famine, Johanna flees one disaster - only to land in another.

After a massive potato famine strikes Ireland, thirteen-year-old Johanna Leary flees to Canada with her family.

But typhus and other illnesses plague the "coffin ships," so named for the staggering number of immigrants who died enroute. One by one Johanna loses the members of her family - first her baby brother on the journey over, then her mother in the Grosse Isle fever sheds where sick passengers are quarantined when they reach the port of Québec, and her father soon after. Johanna has only her brother Michael left when she sets foot on Canadian soil.

When her brother is mistakenly told that she too has died, he sets off to find their uncle "somewhere in Canada," leaving Johanna to face a new life in a strange land... totally alone.

A Sea of Sorrows captures a dreadful time in history for those desperate, impoverished Irish families who hoped to make Canada their home. Johanna's incredible journey of survival is told with insight and sensitivity by master storyteller Norah McClintock.

Norah McClintock

Norah Mcclintock is a five-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Mistaken Identity, The Body in the Basement, Sins of the Father, Scared to Death and Break and Enter - an accomplishment unmatched by any other author. She was also the recipient of the Red Maple Award for Out of the Cold. A Sea of Sorrows is Norah's first contribution to the Dear Canada series. She was inspired by her own great-great-grandmother who came as an Irish immigrant to Montreal in the mid-1880s Norah lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Scholastic