The Way Lies North
By Jean Rae Baxter

This young adult historical novel focuses on Charlotte and her family, Loyalists who are forced to flee their home in the Mohawk Valley as a result of the violence of the "Sons of Liberty" during the American Revolution. At the beginning, fifteen-year-old Charlotte Hooper is separated from her sweetheart, Nick, who sympathizes with the Revolutionaries. The war has already taken the lives of her three brothers, and it is with a sense of desperation that Charlotte and her parents begin the long trek north to the safety of Fort Haldimand (near present-day Kingston). The novel portrays Charlotte’s struggle on the difficult journey north, and the even more difficult task of making a new home in British Canada. In her relationship with Nick, the novel explores how the ideals of the American Revolution were undermined by a revolutionary ethos of violence. In the flight north, the Mohawk nation plays an important role, and Charlotte learns much about their customs and way of life, to the point where she is renamed "Woman of Two Worlds." Later in the novel she is able to repay her Native friends when she plays an important part in helping the Oneidas to become once again members of the Iroquois confederacy under British protection. The story of Charlotte’s journey north is a tale of paradise lost and a new world gained. Strong and capable, Charlotte breaks the stereotype of the eighteenth-century woman, while revealing the positive relationship between the Loyalists and the Native peoples.

"A fascinating story about young people fleeing the violence of the American Revolution and discovering a new way of life with the help of the First Nations peoples." — Ann Walsh

Jean Rae Baxter taught secondary school for many years in Eastern Ontario, a region populated by the descendants of United Empire Loyalists. Research into their history resulted in her young adult story, "Farewell the Mohawk Valley" (Beginnings, Ronsdale, 978-0-921870-87-6). Baxter’s adult fiction appears regularly in Canadian literary journals and anthologies. In 2005, Seraphim Editions published A Twist of Malice (0-9734588-4-4), her short-story collection. The mother of three grown children, she currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with her husband and a canny Scottish terrier named Robbie.