I first read of the astonishing true story of Marguerite de La Rocque in Annamarie Beckel’s 2008 novel Silence of Stone.

Isola opens when the young, orphaned Marguerite is living on her ancestral estate, with only servants for company, and where everything is controlled by her distant and aloof guardian, her father’s cousin Roberval. When she is 17, Roberval sells the property out from under her, and as the newly appointed Lieutenant General of New France, takes Marguerite with him to what is now Canada. However, the seasick and heartbroken Marguerite falls deeply in love with Roberval’s secretary. Her guardian is infuriated, sealing their fate. Roberval maroons Marguerite and her lover on a remote, uninhabited island, along with Marguerite’s elderly nurse.

That Marguerite is a survivor is a dramatic understatement. On what is now called Île des Démons, she endured unimaginable hardships and tragedy – birth, death, isolation, starvation, deep snow and the ever-present threat of polar bears. But incredibly after two years, she is rescued by disbelieving Breton fishermen, and returned to France, where she reconnects with her only childhood friend and, improbable as it seems, finds herself presented to Queen Margueritte of Navarre, who had heard of her story and even written about it.

It is fascinating to read of Marguerite’s journey from a naive young noblewoman to ferocious and steely survivor, who returned to France and became a patron of education. The author writes beautifully and with deep empathy, and modern readers can identify with Marguerite’s happiness, loss, despair and redemption. Well worth your time, this is an epic, personal and powerful story.

Reviewed by Lesley West

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Allegra Goodman’s new book This Is Not About Us will be published in April, 2026. Her novels include Isola (a Reese’s Book Club selection), Sam (a Read With Jenna Book Club selection), The Chalk Artist (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award), Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere and has been anthologised in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of stories, The Family Markowitz and Total Immersion and a novel for younger readers, The Other Side of the Island. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The American Scholar.

Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and fellowships from MacDowell and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Mass.

Visit Allegra Goodman’s website