What would you do if the most powerful man in the county laughed in front of the whole township and signed away a deed he thought was worthless — then came back, hat in hand, when he realized what he'd given up?

In the winter of 1858, Eliza Holt arrived in Greenvale with a canvas sack, thirty-two dollars, and a deed to a derelict farmstead that mill owner Corwin Strath called "a thicket." He wagered publicly she'd be gone before the maple sap ran. What he didn't know — and what she uncovered beneath the floorboards — would change the balance of power in that township forever.

• A young orphaned woman rebuilds a neglected sugarbush alone through a brutal Ontario winter, refusing to be driven out by cold, mockery, or isolation
• Hidden beneath the farmhouse floor: a Crown land grant and fifteen years of unpaid water rights that tied Strath's mill directly to her land
• When spring arrived, it wasn't Eliza who came looking for a way out — it was the man who'd laughed the loudest