The Home Child

by Liz Berry

'Home's not a place, you must believe this,
but one who names you and means beloved.'

In 1908, Eliza Showell, twelve years old and newly orphaned, boards a ship that will carry her from the slums of the Black Country to rural Nova Scotia. She will never return to Britain or see her family again. She is a Home Child, one of thousands of British children sent to Canada to work as indentured farm labourers and domestic servants.

In luminous and tender poems, Eliza's world unfolds, a place where ordinary things are transfigured into treasures - a red ribbon, the feel of a foal's mane, the sound of her name on someone's lips. With nothing to call her own, the wild beauty of Cape Breton is the only solace Eliza has - until another Home Child, a boy, comes to the farm and changes everything.

Inspired by the true story of Liz Berry's great aunt, this spellbinding novel in verse is an exquisite portrait of a girl far from home.

Genres: Poetry, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Canada, Literary Fiction, Novella

106 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2023

About the author

Liz Berry was born and lives in London. She worked in offices, magazines, politics and for a well-known examination body, before becoming a careers guidance advisor, helping young people plan their futures and finding employment opportunities for them. Then, for twenty-two years, she was Head of Art in an East London Comprehensive school.

At the same time she started and ran the East London Gallery for four years

Liz Berry is an artist in oils and mixed media. She also makes experimental embroidered textiles. She exhibits her work mainly in London and southeast England and sells her paintings through Gallery 41.

Reviews

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between 1860 and 1960 over 100,000 thousand children were sent from Britain's slums and orphanages to work in Canada. These children were separated from any family they had, with no opportunity to return home. The story was that these children were going to begin a better life, but they were essentially unpaid servants with few opportunities, and were often treated with cruelty. Liz Berry's verse-novel focuses on one of these children: Eliza Showell, who was Berry's great-aunt. She follows Eliza's life from her birth in a slum in Bilston through her journey across the ocean to Cape Breton in Canada, where she lived out her life.

This is Liz Berry's second full length collection, and it is astonishing. Berry takes the scanty facts she knows of Eliza Showell's life, and creates a rich and tender portrait of her beginning with the love she feels from her mother, and the joy she finds in her home, where she is, "Little queen of Fiery Holes / with her back-to-back court, all its slum / and love, its cram like a burrow." Berry's poetry is lyrical, joyful and constantly inventive, finding the beauty and newness of small things, even in the midst of Eliza's loneliness. In Cape Breton, "the loneliness was so deep, / a field chest-high of snow / she stumbled through, shivering; / a night without stars or moon". Here, Eliza meets another home child, a boy from Glasgow, and slowly the two find solace together: "gentle / as osses at the water-trough." The poems build to a final piece, written in Eliza's voice at the end of her life: this last poem, looking back over Eliza's days, is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I've ever read, and though it is only a few pages long, it's so expansive and moving that it seems to hold a whole world.

Though the story is simple, Berry's deep exploration of emotion and of place, as well as her use of dialect words, rhyme and rhythm, make this feel like an epic. Each poem, read individually, is considered and inventive, but as a whole the pieces work together to create an immersive and tender story, that travels further than its simple structure. I read this in a day -- I couldn't put it down -- and immediately wanted to read it again. Magical.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel in verse "loosely inspired," as Berry puts it, by her great-aunt Eliza Showell's experience as one of the Home Children forcibly migrated from Britain to Canada to act as servants and labourers between 1860 and 1960. Eliza was a 12-year-old orphan when, in 1908, she travelled from the English Midlands to Nova Scotia. The poems' scenes follow her from her home to the Children's Emigration Home in Birmingham, on the sea voyage, and in her new situation as a maid to an elderly invalid. Life is gruelling and lonely until a boy named Daniel also comes to the McPhail farm. "Home's not a place, you must believe this, / but one who names you and means beloved."

I most enjoyed the pairs of "A girl" and "They say" poems. "A girl is cream rising thick as desire in the dark. ... A girl is a tinder box to light all the world's wanting." The latter recount the supposed bad behaviour of the Home Children and the punishments meted out to them. I'd encountered Berry's poetry in a few anthologies (e.g. from The Emma Press), where she was generally writing about motherhood and her work stood out. By comparison, this was a slow and not especially engaging read because of the occasional use of dialect. For me that really got in the way of the story. This would have been my last choice for the Writers' Prize category or overall winner.

(I thought of Patrick Gale's A Place Called Winter because it was also based on an ancestor's experience of unwillingly moving from England to Canada.)

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It’s a book of poems that read as a full story. I didn’t know about Home Children and it was fascinating and heartbreaking to learn about them. I love the way the book has taken what was known of someone’s life and created a character to tell this story. I found it endearing and very clever. I’d love to write a story like this one day! I knocked a star off as I found some of the poems hard to connect with because of the old fashioned/slang words.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and absolutely gorgeous poems.

[Pavel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read something so blessed and heartbreaking. You don't even know how unprepared you are for this. All the memories and beauty of the world will pass through you in these 100 pages.
PS For these 100 pages, you will need 100 bookmarks.

[Ali Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful but heart-breaking. Thank you for gifting it to me, Dotty P. One to treasure

[Jacqui Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, evocative, heartbreaking, moving. I knew nothing about the Home Children prior to reading this story in verse but it has made me want to learn more.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful. Berry is one of the Midlands' greatest living writers.

[Kristen Keeling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and beautiful. Brings to life one story of a vulnerable, misused child and sheds light on the history of the Home Children. It’s easier and less painful not to hear the ways societies have pushed aside the vulnerable. It was a good process for me to hear Eliza’s story resurrected and the heartbreak and loss portrayed so poignantly. Eliza’s life and those of other home children deserved to be remembered and grieved and I’m thankful for the opportunity this book provided.

[Wes Treasure · Rating 5 out of 5]

So so beautiful!!

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm just not a poetry fan, and while I appreciate the content (I knew nothing about the Home Child in Canada programme and the awful treatment these vulnerable children went through) I just couldn't get invested in the story.

[hanni ✧ · Rating 4 out of 5]

— 4/5 ★ //

“Home's not a place, you must believe this, but one who names you and means beloved.”

I was drawn to this book because of its unique form of storytelling — through poetry and verse we make sense of the world that Eliza exists within, a world, an existence, riddled with misfortune, uncertainty, and injustice. Unfortunately, we also see that she is far from being the only child condemned to this kind of life. She is a home child, a child sent from British poverty into the arms of Canadians or other Commonwealth nations who were in need of helpers. Separated from their families, their homes, and their culture, they are forced to do the jobs that no one wants to do. Many suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to take care of them; abuse and neglect were rife, and dehumanisation common. Children pushed into a form of slavery by a state that decided they wanted to rid themselves of a “burden”.

The fact that this is a real, true event that happened in history (though not even that long ago) is sadly unsurprising to me, but I am, however, a little miffed that this is hardly ever spoken about. While I concede that I’m young, I’ve never once heard of the awful injustices these children endured. Though with Britain’s track record of committing crimes and then promptly sweeping them under the rug, perhaps this should be the most unsurprising thing to me.

My heart broke for Eliza, but the knowledge that her great niece not only acknowledged and grieved for her great aunt but also decided to depict her powerful story in such a beautiful display and honourance of language is something I find comforting and incredibly profound. I’m unsure of what happened in the later years of Eliza Showell’s life, but my hope is that she passed in peace, hopefully able to find satisfaction and tranquillity with what life later brought to her. Nothing will undo the damage that was inflicted, but sharing these children’s stories is not only vital to our society’s future, but also for true accountability and justice.

[Sandie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1889, a law was passed in England that allowed the transfer of orphaned children to Canada as indentured servants. Most were between the ages of seven and fourteen but some were as young as toddlers. They were called home children. In this beautiful book, Liz Berry tells the story of one such child, Eliza Stowell.

Eliza is sent to a farmer's house whose wife is bed bound with illness. She does all the cleaning and cooking, laundry, feeding of livestock and tends to the lady of the house. She works from before dawn until there is no more light, only to fall into her bed and sleep, exhausted, until the next day. It is a hard life where Eliza has nothing to call her own. The family even changes her name to Lizzie.

Then a boy arrives, another indentured servant, another home child. He is a few years older than Eliza and they form at first a friendship, then a love. His are the only tender looks and touches Eliza ever gets but they are discovered and her love is sent away.

Liz Berry is a prize-winning poet and she has told this story in verse. The poems tell of the voyage over, the longing for Eliza's mother and brothers, her loneliness and her joy in finding a love. It tells the story of the home children, a program that sent over one hundred thousand children to another country. It is estimated that ten percent of Canada's population are descendants of those who were forcibly emigrated. The poems are written with use of dialect and they bring Eliza to life in a way that few characters are drawn. Eliza is based on Liz Berry's great aunt, Eliza, who was a participant in the story and lost to the family that remained behind. This gorgeous book is recommended for literary fiction readers.

[Kelly Furniss · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1908, Eliza Showell, twelve years old and newly orphaned, boards a ship that will carry her from the slums of the Black Country to rural Nova Scotia. She will never return or see her family again.
With nothing to call her own, the wild beauty of her surroundings is the only solace Eliza has and the book is divided into sections with illustrations of wildlife, flowers and creatures that inhabit Eliza’s world. That is until another Home Child, a boy, arrives at the farm and changes everything.
Inspired by the true story of Liz Berry’s great aunt, this spellbinding novel in verse is an exquisite portrait of a girl far from home.
This is such a harrowing book and in Eliza’s character Berry captures the loss, grief and loneliness those children must have felt. Children who were let down by the Government. Abandoned, ripped from the homes they knew and loved, and left in the care of those who were unvetted.
But yet the author manages to use some beautiful language in tender moments.
Such a emotional book that makes us think about our place in the World, and others, the freedom & constraints and the opportunites we may or may not have.
Liz Berry has used the archives to reimagine the history and it exposes a dreadful political event in history an important one we all must learn about.

[Lucius Malfoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel-in-verse, The Home Child follows Eliza, an orphan sent from her home to Canada to work as a “Home Child,” which is essentially an unpaid domestic labourer, under the pretext of giving her a better life. This is a thing that happened in real life from 1869 to 1948 and, as you can imagine, put many young children in fraught situations beyond their escape.

It's important to note that Liz Berry utilizes a West Midlands dialect for many of these poems, which is a beautiful gesture but makes them a tad on the inaccessible side. I think the most important word to know is the word wum, an old Black Country way of saying “home”. There are many moments of tenderness in this novel-in-verse and wum was very often found in my favourite poems.

It is evident that Liz Berry has an enormous capacity for empathy and her feelings of aching sympathy for the Home Children of history are alive on every page. I do feel the stanzas just listing the names of the Home Children were a little on the lower effort side and not as impactful as every other stanza, but I understand the instinct to give a name back to the nameless.

Not just an exploration of home, but of nature too, this is an earthy, gusty collection bright with Berry's kindness while not shying away from the brutality of Eliza's life.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A haunting reimagining of the tragic life of the author’s great aunt who was removed from the home she shared with two brothers following the death of her mother (her father had died many years earlier) due to poverty and neglect. She was placed in a children’s home in England, and subsequently sent to Canada to be placed with a family in Nova Scotia despite her elder brother’s efforts to reunite the family. There she served as an indentured servant on a farm caring for the owner’s sick wife, keeping house and caring for the farm animals (some would say she was treated like a slave). Although provided with some education, she was neglected, treated with contempt and derision, suffered from cruelty and neglect, received little love or affection, and lost any hope for the better life promised by those who sent the children to Canada for resettlement.

The poetry is lyrical. The reader is left sorrowful for the victims of this utterly cruel and inhumane policy of removal from their homes and relocation to a foreign land for no other reason than the poverty of the victims.

[Marg Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liz Berry is a Black Country poet who I met a few years ago when she came to our poetry group, Cannon Poets, in Moseley Birmingham.
The Home Child was recommended by a friend and I listened to a reading Liz gave on Wordsworth Grasmere via zoom. The novel is based on the true story of one child who was sent from a children's home in Birmingham to Nova Scotia who became a domestic servant on a farm. Eliza Showell, born in Bilston, was unfamiliar with the countryside.
The story imagines her life in a series of one page poems. It's written in Black Country dialect, which if you haven't heard can listen to Liz reading from another of her poems, The Republic of Motherhood, on Youtube.
The story tells of sailing from Liverpool, Eliza's duties on the farm and her falling for another home child. It's beautifully written and moving in many ways. I thought it was going to be sad, and it was, but it was also uplifting.

[Mark Dickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous story told in verse that manages to achieve the rare quality of each poem standing on its own. There are individual poems in here that can slap you across the face with their poignancy and effect.

We follow Eliza as she’s shipped off from her poor upbringing in North England to Canada for a better life but, functionally, to work as a slave on a farm.

The use of the main character’s dialect at the opening poems admittedly irked me because I wasn’t provided enough context to have a comprehension of what was happening. However, as the book carried on I got a mirror held up to me in an absolutely brilliant way.

The imagery of Eliza working on the farm through the harsh Canadian winters was outstanding. When combining that with the portrayals of young love and the scathing rebuke of that last poem spat directly from Eliza’s mouth, this was an epic journey on a very personal scale.

This did something with poetry that I haven’t seen before.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rooted in the beloved dialect of the Black Country, forced to emigrate to Canada, we follow the story of Eliza Showell. Liz Berry's beautiful poetry lifts Eliza from forgotten to unforgettable. This is a series of poems that explore different aspects of Eliza's story. I found them fascinating and emotional. The use of dialect takes me "wum" too, and I feel her pain at being so far from other people who speak like that.I loved the contrasts between the different settings as we experience Eliza's journey, the fiery holes of Bilston, the cold grey of a transatlantic crossing and the extremes of the canadian Wilderness.
Eliza was a distant aunt of the poet who was placed in an orphanage and was sent to Canada as a maid.
I had no idea that this happened and it certainly gives Anne of Green Gables a totally different aspect.

[Alex]

The Home Child is the story of a young Eliza Showell. She is one of the orphans sent to Canada from Britain to work as a farm worker. The story is loosely based on Liz Berry’s great-aunt.

📽️ The Ballad of Eliza Showell. BBC Radio 4 Documentary.




Another important fact about this book is that the entire novel was written in verse. This was my first reading a book in that genre.

The Home Child is about love, loss and grief. It will give you more insight into the Home Children Scheme that sent over 100,000 children from Britain from 1869 to 1932.

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liz Berry's tender and haunting The Home Child is an extraordinary read. As a longtime fan of Liz’s work ever since Bird, I have followed her work from the stunning Black Country to the unforgettable Republic of Motherhood. The Home Child is a novel in verse and tells the tale of her great Aunt Eliza, one of the 100K children sent to Canada as labourers and domestic servants separated from their families and indentured for life far from kin and care. This is such a tender telling mostly from the voice of the child with Berry’s gift for language and music and most of all her tremendous heart which carries the story to journey’s end. Just beautiful and so very moving. I truly could not put it down.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are an imaginative and sensitive exploration of a woman who was one of millions who have lived in a world which did not value them, but used them, whether to solidify empire or muck out stables, without caring for their precious lives.
She is brought back to us by her great niece. We all have ancestors who were mute and inglorious but each as important as any tentative genealogical links to the famous and known to history. Every precious life.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisitely tender and written with huge compassion about Liz Berry’s great aunt who was sent in 1908, from her orphanage in Birmingham, to Canada to do agricultural work.
Without a sniff of the sentimental, Liz Berry breathes life into Eliza Showell in this novel in verse.
As ever, Liz notices and is inspired by the tiniest of seemingly inconsequential details to stop us and make us reflect before moving on.

[Azia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Home Child

This piece is nothing short of magical albeit haunting in many way. A lyrical journey based on Berry’s great aunt, Eliza Showel, and her immigration from Britain’s Middlemore Children’s Emigration Homes to Cape Breton. The dialect and emotion made for such an engrossing read, I couldn’t put it down. A few of my favorite lines:

“A girl is a raindrop disappearing into the lake’s beaten gold.

A girl is ivy in the arms of an indifferent tree, begging to be held.”

And

“And when I sit here in this chair
and think I have lived my whole life
to never have a home,
I send myself back to that hour in the woods
when he first took my fingers
and touched them to a leaf.”

[Meg Onthemove Reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eliza's story is haunting but I remember reading a prose novel on a similar topic a decade ago that was far, far better.

Unfortunately I couldn't find the meter or lyricism in this, and just felt that it trudged rather than sang as I expect poetry to do. Perhaps it would be better hearing the poet speak it?

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed as I thought this was a novel in verse, but actually it's a poetry collection on the same theme. The foreword was very interesting, and terribly sad, and I found the initial poems very moving. But I struggled later on, and found the dialect tiring. It was just a little too much, I felt.
But it did make me want to read more about these children.

[Julia]

A novel in verse, loosely based on the true story of a "home child" - children from poor families in the UK who were sent to Nova Scotia (Canada) and we used (an abused) as free labour - as opposed to what was promised. The language and dialect took a while to get used to, but some wonderful lines, might check out her other work.

[Paul Gormley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspired by the author’s great-aunt, one of many children sent to Canada for a better life but mistreated and bound in servitude.

Consists of many short poems which vary in impact and extracts from letters and reports which reveal the heartlessness at the core of the home child programme.

There is a useful glossary for dialect words which are used throughout.

[elin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

some of the natural imagery was really wonderful, and i enjoyed some of the archaic styles that made some of the poems feel like older ballads — it fit well with the themes and content of the book. however, i do like my poetry to have a bit more personality in it than this, something with a little clever humour or wit in it.

[Meg Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful but utterly heartbreaking story told trough a series of poetry and verse. Based on true events, it’s shocking and painfully real however interwoven with snippets of love and hope. I’m glad Eliza’s story has finally given a voice to the home children.