Isola by Allegra Goodman

Isola by Allegra Goodman 

400 pages

Published February 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes an unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

My Thoughts: 

In 2011 I read Allegra Goodman's The Cookbook Collector and enjoyed it enough that when this book began getting buzz and I recalled Goodman's name, I was eager to read it. Not sure if Reese Witherspoon had read Goodman's work before, but after she read this one, she was eager to put it into other readers hands.

Truthfully, I just saw the author's name and requested this one - without even looking at what it was about.  So I started reading, feeling sorry for this little orphaned little girl who was entirely reliant on a guardian who was never around, who was left in the care of her nurse and the other servants in the castle her parents had left her. I'm thinking that the really terrible thing that's going to happen to Marguerite is that her guardian is going to marry her off to some icky older man when she turns 15 and that's a bad enough fate. But no! Jean-Francois Roberval, her guardian, uses the money that should go toward Marguerite's dowry to recoup losses from his shipping business; then he leases out her home to gain the money he needs to rebuild his fleet. 

Without any money to wed her off, and a deep-seeded need to manipulate and own Marguerite, Roberval insists that she join him on the 8-week journey to New France (Canada) along with a group of pilgrims looking to start a new life. But Roberval is unaware that Marguerite and his secretary have begun to develop a relationship. When he discovers it, just as they begin to spot land, he deserts the two of them and Marguerite's nurse on an island. There is no wood to speak of on the island and not much in the way of wildlife to hunt. The only saving grace is that Roberval has left them with some food, bedding, knives, guns & powder, and some clothing. It's enough to get them started but they won't survive without finding shelter and how to get more food and fresh water. It's grueling work that eventually forces Marguerite to pitch in and leave her sheltered ways behind her. Two years later, she is finally saved. But finding her way home and to safety turns out to be almost as difficult as the past two years have been. 

It's a tough read, with things going from bad to worse and worse. I sometimes felt like I couldn't go on; I often wondered how Marguerite did. The human will to survive to always astonishing. 

I'm not always one to read the author's notes at the end of books (and why not since I'm always interested in learning what inspired author's to write their books?), but this time I was glad that I did because I had entirely missed that this novel was inspired by the real life of Marguerite de la Rocque, who was stranded by her guardian on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, along with her lover, in 1542. Goodman found a reference to this in a book about explorer Jacques Cartier 22 years ago and thought it would make a great story. Let that be a lesson to aspiring authors - hang on to those book ideas, you never know when you'll finally figure out how to make them work!