Cover reveal! This tragic love story is also a suspenseful, starkly honest look at Colonial America, set during the “Starving Time” in Jamestown. To the Bone by Alena Bruzas hits shelves September 10, 2024.

It’s 1609 at James Fort, and Ellis has recently arrived from England with Henry Collins and his wife, who she serves as their indentured help. To orphaned Ellis, James Fort is an opportunity – a fresh start in a new world. And now that she has fallen for the bold and glorious Jane Eddowes, she feels even more hopeful about her future. Foolishly hopeful, for soon she comes to understand the horrible realities of her home: the crimes that her fellow settlers have committed against the indigenous people there, the terrible shortage of food they are facing as winter draws near, and the cruelty of her employer, both to her and to his pregnant wife. Ellis will call upon all her fortitude, but will it be enough? Gripping, shocking, and exquisitely told, this is crucial U.S. history seen through the eyes of an extraordinary fictional teenager.

Scroll down to read a sneak peek. And remember to preorder your copy here!

Cover design by Kristie Radwilowicz; Cover illustrations by Adam Parata

Mr. Collins says I can call him Henry, though yet it feels strange to say it. He says will I get water and wait in the storehouse line for the grain. But oh it is hot. My head hurts from it and my eyes feel swollen and my skin is tight and red. It already peels like birch bark. But I go outside where the heat is sharp, with buckets banging against my legs.

Henry, Mr. Collins, is already brown from the sun. His face and forearms. When he took off his shirt I saw the white skin of his chest and shoulders and stomach. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. I am either white or red and peeling.

In the line there is some number of whispering women ahead of me. I set my buckets down by my ankles and scratch a bite through my hose.

Jane Eddowes slips through the line. She pokes her mother in the side as she passes and Mrs. Eddowes jumps and smiles at Jane, who is wicked with her grin and her eyes like the deepest part of twilight. Mrs. Eddowes waves Jane away from the chore of waiting for our grain. I’m standing, shifting in the hot hot sun, burning my cheeks and forehead and nose.

When the cape merchant allows me inside the dark building to collect our grain, it is less again. I watch the kernels as they slide into my basket, lined with linen to save every precious grain. Another measure he pours. One and one and one and one and one and one. I don’t know how to count but I know the rhythm and he stops too early.

I look up at him but he won’t answer for it. “Go now,” he says.

Sea Venture was supposed to arrive early in August. At the same time as Jane. At the same time as me. We left home at the same time in our fleet of ships. But there was a hurricane. In the humid dark, we were battered against the sweating walls of the hull, the sounds of retching, the smell of vomit, praying, crying. They said we couldn’t have any light to avoid fire but I kept my eyes closed anyway.

The men on the balustrades watch for Sea Venture every day, their necks craning. Jane says that our food was on it. Salt pork and beef, dried peas, hard biscuits, onions, and limes. It was lost in the hurricane, but perhaps it didn’t sink. Perhaps it will come tomorrow morning. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. But it doesn’t come.

Jane is in the wellhouse. “Do you know?” she says. Her hair is white from the sun and her skin is dark gold because her father is indulgent and she plays outside though yet she’s too old for it.

     “What?”

     “Mr. Adam and Mr. Franz, they went back to the country people.” Jane pulls her bucket from the well. Her sleeves are pushed up and her muscles roll under her skin. “But they killed them.”

     “Who?”

     “The country people killed Mr. Adam and Mr. Franz. And why should they trust them, I wonder. Mr. Adam and Mr. Franz are faithless. They had their heads beaten with clubs until they were dead.” She splashes water on her flushed cheeks. “Ellis,” she says, putting her wet hand on my arm. “Upriver there is a place where the water is shallow and slow and Rowan says the country people let us be. Come with me! We can swim.”

     “I can’t swim,” I say, but I don’t move her hand from my arm.

     “We can wade. You don’t have to swim.”

Her eyes are bright and I want to please her and be naked with her in the water but I shake my head. “Mr. Collins says I must tend to Mrs. Collins. She’s unwell.”

Jane rolls her eyes. “Again?”

I reproach her with my frown but then I can’t help it and smile, waving as she walks the buckets back to her house and then, I suppose, to go swim, perhaps with Rowan, though yet she is too old to be playing with boys and naked. We are both too old. In a year or two we could be married and yet still she plays like a child.