Woman against Nature, not so much.
But that’s exactly what Elizabeth Boyer’s “Margueritte de la Roque: A Story of Survival” is – a somewhat fictionalized account* of a French noblewoman’s survival after she, her soon-to-be husband and her nurse are abandoned on an island off the coast of Quebec in the early days of New France.
While briskly told, Boyer’s tale resembles that of Farley Mowat’s fictional “Lost in the Barrens,” which I read in elementary school. Mowat’s prose is more straightforward, but Boyer’s tale is the more remarkable in that what she tells actually happened to a real person.
I’ll keep this review light on spoilers – suffice it to say all does not go well for Margueritte and company on the island. But we see the familiar tale of survival: Finding and building shelter, finding and preserving food, and then finding and preserving sanity as nature and the elements of the fierce sea coast take their toll.
Almost as entertaining – though far less gripping – are the reminisces de la Roque has as she struggles for survival. She apparently grew up near or was familiar with the city of Perigueux, France, and the surrounding countryside, and spends some time there in the book as well. I lived in Perigueux for about five months as a young missionary, so the landmarks and buildings and streets she writes of are familiar, and for that I felt the same kind of longing de la Rocque felt for her long-lost homeland. I’ve been in the cathedral she recalls, walked on many of the same streets. Of the cities I lived in while in France, that’s the one I’d love to go back and see the most.
As with Mowat’s tale, there is survival, in building a temporary shelter, a more permanent shelter, and then finding a place of refuge to flee to when the elements grew too fierce. And Boyer’s telling of the tale through French eyes kept me running to and from the dictionary, trying to interpret some of the words used, particularly those describing the animals she encounters (puffins I was able to guess, thanks to the vivid description Boyer provides of them, along with the amusing sobriquet de la Rocque gave them: perroquets, or parrots.
Boyer, I think, captures the spirit and the madness of such tales of survival well. I could see myself reacting in the same ways in the situation de la Rocque found herself in, and probably performing better than I would have under the circumstances. Not having lived alone on an island in inhospitable territory before, I don’t know how I’d react in the face of death, but now maybe I have an inkling.
And reading this tale gives me a few ideas of the madness and spirit capable in those who live alone, something that’ll be a help as I work on finishing “The Hermit of Iapetus,” the tale of a man alone for far less noble reasons and in far less noble spirit than Boyer portrays in her historical re-creation.
*Boyer researched the story thoroughly and hews to what is written in historical accounts. The fictionalize parts come, of course, to filling in dialogue and details of what happened to the trio while on the island.
Boyer describes a building similar to this as de la Rocque recalls the architecture from her homeland as she seeks to make her logette on the island more impervious to the weather.
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