who not even back down from a bear!  She reacted calmly and coolly to the situation, immediately ordering her mother and siblings into the loft and then staring the bear down.

Lyddie also holds her own on the family farm after her mother leaves.  Her mother simply can’t handle life, and so she goes to Lily’s uncle and leaves her and her brother Charles behind to deal with the farm.  Lyddie can handle it though.  She keeps herself and her brother alive.

The fact that it is important to Lyddie to do things by herself is evident from the conversation with her brother about asking their neighbor for help.

He should know she was not going to be beholden to the neighbors for anything so trivial as her own comfort. (Ch. 1)

Lyddie is determined to never be beholden to anyone.  She does not want to have to rely on others and insists on doing everything herself.  She takes on the family debt single-handedly, believing that it is her responsibility and not her brother’s or her mother’s.

Lyddie likes to say, “we can still hop.”  She is an optimist in some ways and a realist in others.  No matter what happens, she takes things as they come.  She works hard at the tavern, but when she gets fired she finds another job at a factory.  No matter what happens, Lyddie always keeps going.

The most obvious example of Lyddie's bravery in the first four chapters is her confrontation with the bear. When a black bear pokes its nose through the door of the cabin that has been left ajar, Lyddie keeps a cool head. She orders the rest of the family, even her mother, to climb up the ladder to the loft. She stays on the main floor until everyone else is safely above. She maintains fierce eye contact with the bear, and that keeps it from coming in until she has gotten up to the loft. When Charlie accidentally hits it with the edge of the ladder, the bear rears up, and once again Lyddie locks eyes with it. This encounter reveals Lyddie's courage and leadership. She takes charge of the situation, putting herself in danger in order to save her family. 

Lyddie reveals this same courage when her mother says she wants to leave their home to go await the end of the world at her sister's house. Lyddie refuses to go with her mother and decides to stay on the farm with Charlie, trying to keep the place running until their father returns. Again, Lyddie is willing to face hardship and danger for the good of her family. She believes the best thing for her family is to all be together in the cabin, and she wants to make sure her father can find them when he returns. Therefore she takes on the daunting task of running their household herself with only Charlie to assist her. 

When Lyddie finds out she has been hired out to Cutler's Tavern, she bravely puts herself into her work at the Tavern without sulking or pitying herself. She continues to show bravery when she is in hard situations whether facing down a bear, running a home by herself, or working in a difficult position.

Lyddie shows determination in lots of different ways. Despite being a young adult, she shows great maturity beyond her years, dealing with all kinds of problems that would stump many fully-grown adults. Growing up in such a harsh environment has made her tough, certainly tough enough to deal with an inquisitive, hungry bear poking its large head through the cabin door. And this isn't even the biggest challenge that Lyddie has to face. She has such great love for her family that she's prepared to go out and look for work to support them, no matter how hard it is. She works like a trojan at Cutler's Tavern, though it still doesn't prevent her from getting fired.

But Lyddie's strong and determined. So she heads off to the Lowell mills to work long hours sweating away in a factory. It's at the factory that Lyddie turns from a young adult into a woman. She has to deal with so much adversity——long hours, lousy pay, sexual harassment——and yet she never lets anything get her down for long. To use an old expression, she has her eyes on the prize; she never loses sight of what's important in life. Lyddie's determined to help out her family and get herself an education, and nothing will be allowed to stand in her way.

Lyddie is a very courageous young woman. She's not yet fifteen, yet she and her brother Charlie are already the sole supports for their family, working hard to hold onto the farm left to them by their father. As well as displaying great moral courage, Lyddie is also physically brave. When a bear tries to enter the family home, she shows grace under fire, getting everyone to safety before staring out the bear. Most people in that situation would've been incredibly scared, unsure what to do. But not Lyddie. Her courage displayed so early on in the story helps to establish just what kind of person she is, and how she'll conduct herself throughout the rest of the book.

Working as a child laborer in a dangerous factory is another example of Lyddie's courage. Most people today have very little understanding of just how bad the conditions for people working in factories were in those days. As well as the challenges of soul-destroying drudgery, Lyddie also has to deal with the issue of sexual harassment, when Mr. Marsden, one of the factory's overseers, starts touching one of the girls inappropriately. Lyddie stands up to him, and in protecting the other girls from a sexual predator, she's showing enormous courage way beyond her tender years. Predictably, Lyddie loses her job for speaking out and challenging Marsden. But this merely proves once more just how courageous she is. Lyddie was prepared to sacrifice her job to prevent girls in the factory from being harassed by a serial sex predator. That's a stand that few would've been willing to take.