Although R.D. Blackmore is most strongly associated with romantic fiction set in the bucolic English countryside, this novel deviates significantly from his typical formula. Set in the harsh desert environment of the Western U.S. in the mid-1800s, Erema follows the travails of a young British girl and her father who get lost while looking for an old family friend. Will Erema survive to clear up the suspicious circumstances besmirching her father's good name?

"The sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." These are the words that have followed me always. This is the curse which has fallen on my life. If I had not known my father, if I had not loved him, if I had not closed his eyes in desert silence deeper than the silence of the grave, even if I could have buried and bewailed him duly, the common business of this world and the universal carelessness might have led me down the general track that leads to nothing. Until my father fell and died I never dreamed that he could die. I knew that his mind was quite made up to see me safe in my new home, and then himself to start again for still remoter solitudes. And when his mind was thus made up, who had ever known him fail of it?

Reproduction of the original: Erema by R.D. Blackmore