While the story in the novel is fiction, it is based on real events that happened in England. Three children are taken from their home and placed in a children's home after their mother becomes too ill to care for them and sent to the hospital. (The father died many years prior.) The children think their mother will come get them when she gets better, but instead, due to miscommunication (or rather, lack of trying to communicate and just not caring on the part of the children's home workers), the children are sent to Canada to become workers and servants for families there.
However, their mother has not died. She's actually gotten better and very distraught when she sends her oldest daughter, who has been working as a maid outside of London in a very Downton Abbey-esque home, to check on the children only to find that they are no longer there. The oldest sister, Laura, finagles her way onto a boat bound for Canada so she can search for her siblings and bring them home.
Lucky for Laura, she's got the help of Andrew Frasier, who is the son of her former boss and a lawyer on his way to Canada to write a report about the children's emigration program.
I won't tell you what happens in this book because there will be more books in the series, so just know that this book does not close with a tidy ending. But I'm sure everything will somehow work out in the next few books.
The author is Christian, and as such, writes the characters in a very Pollyanna sort of way. Laura is ashamed of herself for securing passage to Canada under false pretenses. Gasp, she lied! What will God think of her for trying to save her siblings? I guess there was supposed to be a message of "let go and let God", but it didn't seem like God was doing much to help Laura and her mother out.
And really, none of this would have happened if Mrs. Graham, the family friend, had been more helpful in the beginning. The children needed a place to stay, and Mrs. Graham, being such a good Christian woman, tells them that she can't house them. So off they go to the home!
Anyway, I did like that this was based on real events, and I would like to know what happens to the children in the rest of the books. Will all the siblings be reunited? Read on!
No Ocean Too Wide is published by Multnomah and is on bookstore shelves now. I received a free ARC in exchange for my honest review.
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