Waiting for the Queen

Fifteen-year-old Eugenie de La Roque and her family barely escape the French Revolution with their lives and the clothes on their backs. Along with several other noble families, they sail to America, where New France is being carved out of the rugged wilderness of Pennsylvania. They don’t know that the village awaiting them is nothing like the home they’ve left behind--there are no festive balls or carefully manicured gardens, to say nothing of the luxuries once provided by their many servants.

Hannah Kimbrell is a young Shaker who’s been chosen to help prepare New France for the arrival of the aristocrats, but Hannah wants nothing more than to be home with her mother and new baby brother. Her homesickness is only deepened by the rude and capricious demands of the newly arrived French families, who are dismayed to find simple log cabins as protection against the coming winter.

In this wild place away from home and the memories they hold dear, Eugenie and Hannah find more in common than they first realize. With much to learn from each other, the girls unite to help free several slaves from their tyrannical French owner, a dangerous scheme that requires personal sacrifice in exchange for the slaves’ freedom.

A story of friendship against all odds, Waiting for the Queen is a loving portrait of the values of a young America, and a reminder that true nobility is more than a royal title.