The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor

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The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Page 36

by Sally Armstrong


  Some years ago when I was returning to Canada from assignment, a stopover at London’s Heathrow airport included a lunch with an old friend. She asked how the assignment had gone and I replied in much breathless detail about the courageous woman I’d met and interviewed. My friend remarked, “I see you’ve collected another bead for your string.”

  Indeed I’ve been very fortunate to meet and interview strong women who are making history and changing the lives of their sisters. These are the women who stir my soul and feed my appetite for changing the status of women and girls. They were very much on my mind while I waded through the research on Charlotte Taylor. Everything from her tenacity to her shenanigans made me think she was a woman born a couple of centuries ahead of her time, a woman many of us might want to be and only a few would dare to emulate. As it turns out, readers told me they were bound to Charlotte for the same reasons. One remarked, “She’s universal and timeless. She represents the struggles all women have.” Another said, “Every woman can relate to her—she’s a fighter, an immigrant, a tireless worker and best of all, a cheeky dame.” And still another commented, “She’s a woman who refuses to vaporize and gives you the courage to push on.”

  Taking part in the rich conversations that have flowed out of Charlotte’s story tells me that she strikes a nerve with Canadians—our fascination with our roots; our pride in an unwavering pioneering ethic; the bold, dauntless and often tragic beginning of Canada. The reaction to the book makes it clear that Charlotte Taylor is not simply my great-great-great-grandmother. She’s everyone’s ancestor, as we all either have such a woman in our own family tree—or wish that we did.

  And there are other threads woven throughout the story that made for intriguing book club discussions. Her relationship with Wioche was a hot topic. Was he the love of her life? And how about the nature of her alliances with John Blake, William Wishart and Philip Hierlihy? Were they merely providers and partners in the survival stakes, or did the rugged Blake, the gentle Wishart and the entrepreneurial but blustery Hierlihy each appeal to her in his own way? Those are conclusions I left up to them (and now leave up to you), but we all agreed that Charlotte was a woman of strength, passion and compassion who had an ample supply of spice in her life. For example, the book club members in Burnt Church told stories about Charlotte that had been passed down to them from their own ancestors, who had shared the river with Charlotte. One told a tale her grandmother often recounted: “By the time she was on her third husband, some women would follow Charlotte Taylor when she was out and about and wherever Charlotte walked, they would pour boiling water in her footsteps.”

  The book club members wondered, as I did, why she didn’t go back to England, why she didn’t take advantage of the returning ships and face the consequences of being a runaway girl with child rather than struggling to survive against so many odds. The readers picked at the pieces of this discussion and came to the interesting conclusion that pioneers—whether east or west or in between—are people who somehow see far into the future when most can only focus on the present.

  The strongest reaction to this novel was that Charlotte Taylor was the epitome of a woman that they longed to know. I know that I needed to know her, and from the people I’ve met who encountered her in these pages, it seems we all have a craving to hear stories like hers, which are scarce in our history, the stories of the wives and lovers of the men whose adventures fill our libraries.

  She lingers with me.

  THE LOOK OF THE BOOK

  Have you ever wondered how a cover comes to look the way it does? Here, book designer Kelly Hill takes you behind the scenes of The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor.

  The hardcover design needed to convey the rich historical context of the book and to entice the reader with a promise of the story of a remarkable woman. The design challenge was in the limited number of images that reference the Miramichi region in the late 1700s, along with the fact that there is no visual record of Charlotte Taylor herself. So, I found a painting of a red-haired woman from the same period as Charlotte Taylor. And an etching from the archives of the New Brunswick Museum, View of Miramichi (1760), serves to represent the beauty and excitement of a unique time and place in Canadian history.

  In contrast to a painting and an etching, which are typical to the historical genre, the paperback features a colourized photograph and band of birch bark. The three-part composition (woman/author/setting), is quite similar to the hardcover, but has a much more modern feel. Charlotte Taylor was ambitious, independent, and passionate—all qualities that resonate with contemporary women.

  VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2008

  Copyright © 2007 Sally Armstrong

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2008. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Armstrong, Sally

  The nine lives of Charlotte Taylor / Sally Armstrong.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37588-9

  1. Taylor, Charlotte, 1755?–1841—Fiction. 2. Women immigrants—New Brunswick—Miramichi River Valley—Biography—Fiction. 3. British—New Brunswick—Miramichi River Valley—Biography—Fiction. 4. Frontier and pioneer life—New Brunswick—Miramichi River Valley—Fiction. 5. Miramichi River Valley (N.B.)—Biography—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS8601.R595N55 2008 c813′.6 c2007-903612-0

  v3.0

 

 

 


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