Just Sixteen.

Georgie Talcott is sixteen, motherless, and watching her childhood home get sold to strangers. The furniture will go to strangers too. Everything she knew is being boxed up and carried away, and she must now become someone, not just be someone's daughter. The novel follows Georgie as she faces the brutal arithmetic of being a young woman in the late 1800s: no inheritance, no husband, no safety net, just the crushing expectation that she will somehow make a life for herself. She rejects an easier path offered by relatives and instead throws herself into the uncertain work of finding meaningful employment, learning that independence is earned through labor that often feels invisible and unthanked. This is a quiet novel about small heroisms, about learning that adulthood is not a single moment but a series of choices to keep going when no one is watching. It will appeal to readers who love character-driven stories about resilience and the particular ache of growing up female.