The Tinderbox

Flames are bright against the night sky. Thirteen-year-old Emma watches with horrified fascination as they consume the family’s log cabin, leaving her and her younger brother orphaned. These three books are set in the early 1830s. Emma’s grief and shock, and her bravery in building a new life, are timeless. Marianne Brandis’s vivid evocation of pioneer life in Upper Canada – the texture of the log cabin, the sights and smells of harvest, the raw cold of outdoor chores at dawn – has been delighting readers since the first book was first published in 1982.