Following the death of her mother, Gemma lives with her father, a fisherman, for two years, until "one pleasant August afternoon he didn't come home" and soon, Gemma learns that her "father had drowned" (Livesey 17).  This contrasts the hypotext, Jane Eyre, because, in that novel, Jane's parents both die within months of each other while she's an infant and she has no memory of them. Gemma has at least vague memories of life with her father before his untimely death, which leaves her, like Jane, an orphan. The fact that Gemma lived in Iceland for the first three years of her life becomes significant later in the novel when she returns to Iceland and is struck by the familiarity of things like “the red and brown linoleum” that she “knew at once [she] had crawled and walked over…many, many times” (Livesey 426).

Following the death of her father, Gemma’s uncle comes to retrieve her and bring her under his care, similar to Jane. Another difference, however, is that Gemma is taken from Iceland to Scotland and must learn a whole new language and leave her native country. Throughout her youth, she laments being landlocked as opposed to living near the sea like she did when she was a young child. In contrast, Jane Eyre just goes from one place in England to another and doesn't feel the same alienation and longing for her motherland. 

Livesey, Margot. The Flight of Gemma Hardy: a Novel. HarperPerennial, 2013.