In 1883 Anna Leveridge brought her children from England to make a home with her husband in the backwoods of north Hastings County, Ontario. She learned to live frugally, and to practise the rugged pioneer arts of making do, using up, doing without.

From the time of her arrival until 1891, when her mother died, Anna wrote frequently to her family in England. Some of her letters were lost, but many were kept and later returned to the family in Canada. They tell about her life, with its hardships, its joy in simple things, and its abiding faith in the goodness of God. Louis Tivy, Anna’s grandson, prepared the letters for publication. In writing the accompanying narrative, he drew upon the recollections of his grandparents and memories of his own childhood in rural Ontario.