Elsje

Elsje is fourteen when her world splits in two. Until now, she's known only the wind-bent fields and weathered hands of her grandmother's farm, where she runs barefoot through meadows and her biggest worry is whether the cow will calve before nightfall. Then her grandmother grows too frail to care for her, and Elsje is sent to the city, to the polished rooms of her aunt's house, where every word must be weighed and every curtsy executed perfectly. Her cousin Margje is everything Elsje is not: polished, selfish, and determined to make the country bumpkin suffer for existing. To survive, Elsje must learn to navigate a world of stiff corsets and colder hearts, all while holding onto the stubborn, tender thing inside her that refuses to be polished away. This is a story about what happens when you lose everything familiar and must rebuild yourself in foreign ground.