An unforgettable epic saga of a French noblewoman deserted on an island where her survival will depend on the power of her faith and love—from the New York Times bestselling author of Sam.
Heir to a chateau with its own village and lands, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and Jean Francois de la Rocque de Roberval—an enigmatic and volatile older man Marguerite has never met—becomes her guardian, controlling her future. He sells her property to pay his debts, leaving her destitute, and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends Roberval’s servant and the two begin meeting secretly aboard the ship, drawn together by an intense attraction. But when Roberval discovers Marguerite’s deception, his rage is all-consuming. As punishment, he maroons her and her lover on a small island, condemning them to certain death.
Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite is now at the mercy of the elements. Without food or shelter, she must learn to hunt and live in a cave. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, survival becomes nearly impossible. Marguerite despairs; has everyone and everything she once held dear abandoned her?
A riveting portrait inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, and a gorgeous celebration of the power of the natural world, Isola is the timeless story of a woman realizing her true strength.
Allegra Goodman’s novels include The Chalk Artist,Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of short 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 Boston Globe,The Jewish Review of Books, 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 a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is writing a new novel.
View titles by Allegra Goodman
An unforgettable epic saga of a French noblewoman deserted on an island where her survival will depend on the power of her faith and love—from the New York Times bestselling author of Sam.
Heir to a chateau with its own village and lands, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and Jean Francois de la Rocque de Roberval—an enigmatic and volatile older man Marguerite has never met—becomes her guardian, controlling her future. He sells her property to pay his debts, leaving her destitute, and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends Roberval’s servant and the two begin meeting secretly aboard the ship, drawn together by an intense attraction. But when Roberval discovers Marguerite’s deception, his rage is all-consuming. As punishment, he maroons her and her lover on a small island, condemning them to certain death.
Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite is now at the mercy of the elements. Without food or shelter, she must learn to hunt and live in a cave. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, survival becomes nearly impossible. Marguerite despairs; has everyone and everything she once held dear abandoned her?
A riveting portrait inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, and a gorgeous celebration of the power of the natural world, Isola is the timeless story of a woman realizing her true strength.
Allegra Goodman’s novels include The Chalk Artist,Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of short 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 Boston Globe,The Jewish Review of Books, 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 a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is writing a new novel.
View titles by Allegra Goodman
