In the afterword to Isola, Allegra Goodman’s new book, she writes that she found inspiration in a story written by the French queen, Marguerite of Navarre, in an incomplete story collection called the Heptaméron (1558 CE)1. To flesh out the scant facts in the queen’s story, Goodman adds what she gleaned from research about the colonization of New France (later Canada) and the conditions faced by French colonists who showed up there with no clue how to survive in the Canadian wilderness. The result is an impossible story of hardship, love, sorrow, and truth.
Marguerite de la Rocque was born in a gilded cage. (We’re not sure when, exactly.) Her deceased parents left her a prosperous property in Périgord and Marguerite has the best clothing, food, and even jewelry. Loneliness is her biggest problem until her guardian sends her a former lady-in-waiting to the queen and the lady’s daughter to put the finishing touches on Marguerite’s education as a gentlewoman. It’s only later that Marguerite learns that this same guardian, Jean-François Roberval, mortgaged and then sold her parents’ property and that her privilege is a facade. Without any practical skills with which to make money, Marguerite’s only hope of room and board is to follow Roberval’s commands—even when those commands take her across the Atlantic Ocean, to a small island2 off the coast of Newfoundland.
Roberval is an out-and-out villain (he absolutely made my skin crawl during his first visits to Marguerite before they sail for Canada) but his decision to maroon Marguerite, her servant Damienne, and the young man she fell in love with is shocking. No one lives on the island. The soil is too poor for crops. They only have arquebuses and limited power and shot to hunt with. The only question is whether hunger or winter will kill them all first. And yet, Marguerite—the least likely survivor—manages to survive.
I don’t want to ruin the end of Isola by saying who lives and who dies. I had my heart in my mouth for most of the chapters set on the island, especially when the polar bears show up. But the ending of the book gave me pause; I’m going to try and reflect on this without giving away too many details. Isola, to me, is entirely a book about survival, even the parts set in France. Marguerite might be better equipped to survive than I thought at the outset because, even though she’s a member of the aristocracy, her guardian’s theft of her property means that she has to beg and scrounge for funds to stay clothed and fed. She might be proud but she’s not so proud that she refuses to do unpleasant things to keep living, even if it means memorizing the odious Roberval’s favorite psalms or skinning a dead animal or telling a carefully crafted story so that she stays on the right side of public morality.
Goodman has brought Marguerite de la Rocque back from the dead one more time in this fascinating tale pulled from real and possibly apocryphal history. Readers of historical fiction who prefer their history gritty will enjoy this one.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
- A digital copy in English translation is available via the University of Pennsylvania’s library. Marguerite de la Rocque’s story is number LXVII (67). ↩︎
- There is some debate about the island’s location and actual existence. ↩︎