Writing Women Out of the Footnotes

Twenty-two years ago, on a family vacation to Montreal, I was sitting up in bed nursing my newborn daughter.  At six weeks, she woke up a lot, and so I nursed her while reading a stack of library books I had brought along for my sons.  In a children’s book about the explorer Jacques Cartier, I read a passage that stopped me short. It went something like this: In 1542, a French nobleman named Jean-François Roberval sailed to meet with Cartier in the territory that is now called Canada.  Roberval brought along his young ward, Marguerite de la Rocque, who annoyed him by having an affair aboard the ship. In his frustration, Roberval marooned Marguerite and her lover on a deserted island where she managed to survive for more than two years while fighting off polar bears.

Startled, I stared at the page. Wait.  What?  Who was this woman? Where did she find the strength? What happened to her?

The author said no more on the subject—but I could not stop thinking about the young woman marooned.  How did she end up on that ship? And how did she survive?  I grew up on an island, and I’ve always been drawn to novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Kidnapped.  What would it be like to write a novel about a woman cast away?  I dreamed of writing this story, but didn’t do it.  I wrote several other books, but I kept thinking about Marguerite.

Finally, when I was writing my latest novel Sam, a contemporary story about a girl who loved to boulder, Marguerite’s story started to open up  for me. Sam was a climber, a striver, a survivor and I began to  see Marguerite through that lens. Marguerite compelled me—but how would I approach her?

Like an actor, I searched for my character, trying to understand her from the inside.   I began to think that she should tell her own story in my novel—but how would I find her voice?

In the mornings, I worked on Sam and in the afternoons, I wrote by hand in a notebook, experimenting with different openings for the book that would become Isola.

Over and over, I tried to write the first line—and then one day, Marguerite spoke to me. 

I never knew my mother. She died the night that I was born, and so we passed each other in the dark . . .

From there, I knew Marguerite would tell me the rest.  I could hear her voice, and I knew she would guide me on her journey from France to the New World, from comfort, to adventure, from youthful arrogance to experience.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book.”  I felt the truth in this as I set sail with Marguerite.  I hope you feel it when you read Isola.

Bon Voyage,

Allegra