A memoir of myth, motherhood and hidden history

A beautifully written and astonishing memoir of a woman - a writer - in the midst of motherhood, marriage and life.

While struggling with the demands of family and career, the writer discovers a figure from history, Marguerite de la Rocque, a sixteenth-century noblewoman who was abandoned, pregnant, on a remote island in Nova Scotia. When she is finally rescued, her lover and her baby have died, but she has survived this inhospitable wilderness, alone, for two long years. It's a remarkable story of survival, but one that has been consigned to a footnote.

Delving deeper into Marguerite's hidden life, the writer begins to question her ability to tell this story, the story of any women in history - or even her own.


'The deeply personal journey of a writer, surprising and illuminating, and for me, familiar in the most reassuring way as she loses herself in this compelling story' Esther Freud