Take a journey across America with a poor Victorian flower girl in her epic journey to a better life, from the internationally bestselling author Lesley Pearse

As voted by readers as their favourite Lesley Pearse novel

One good deed takes her into another world . . .

Sixteen-year-old Matilda is a poor Covent Garden flower girl until the day she saves the life of Tabitha, a minister's daughter. Welcomed into Tabitha's family, Matilda is offered the chance of a lifetime.

She leaves behind London's slums and enters the darkest corners of New York. Traveling across the vast plains to the Wild West, she finds herself in San Francisco, a city in the grip of the gold rush.

Streetwise and strong-willed, Matilda forges a new life for herself and Tabitha among pioneers like Captain James Russell - a man to whom she is deeply attracted.

Yet a civil war will soon rip apart this new nation . . .

Can Matilda and those she loves brave separation and carry on, never looking back?