The Denniston Rose — Jenny Pattrick

Set in the bleak 1880s coal mining settlement of Denniston -- an isolated community set high on a plateau above New Zealand's West Coast -- five-year-old Rose and her mother mysteriously arrive in this chaotic community filled with ex-gold miners down on their luck, ruffians on the run from the law, and seasoned and embittered English miners. No one knows what has driven the two to the area, but most agree the mother must be desperate -- or worse -- to not only choose Denniston as a residence but to eventually select local drunk Jimmy Cork as her bedfellow, leaving her indomitable daughter to fend for herself, struggling to secure a place of her own in a tough and aggressive town.