Product Description

Using correspondence and personal papers as well as their published works, this biography tells the tale of two nineteenth century women who travelled to Canada expecting to make their fortunes and join the cream of colonial society only to face desperate privation: forest fires, wild animals, frostbite and starvation. Their fortitude and hard-won success as writers and the first chroniclers of the native flora made them icons of early Canadian literature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #750562 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 379 pages

Customer Reviews

A heart rendering account of an amazing pioneering story.
Two genteel writers, Sussana Moodie and Catherine Parr Traille from rural Suffolk set sail in 1832 with their soldier husbands in ships tightly packed with emigrants. Their hopes were high for a good life in Canada with greater prospects than Engalnd offered them. Acclaimed biographer Charlotte Gray arrived in Canada 150 years later and read Susanna's best known book "Roughing it in the Bush". This inspired her to research the wealth of personal letters, journals and published work of the two women. "Sisters in the Wilderness" is a heart rendering account of their amazing pioneering story. Charlotte Gray's descriptive narrative often reads like a gripping novel. You hasten to turn the page to find out how the sisters could possibly survive yet another crisis of failed crops, starvation, the death of one more child. And always there was the hopelessness of rejection slips from the few uninterested Canadian publishers. Their arrival in the Canadian back woods was bitterly disappointing. Like others, they had been thoroughly duped by unscrupulous English land agents whose promise of a utopian land of plenty were totally false. The husbands of the two sisters were manually useless and unfamiliar with hard labour. Both ex soldiers they had been dismissed after the Napoleonic wars on meagre half pay with the bonus of free Canadian land thrown in. They now faced the hacking down of huge trees, clearing bush and forest land before building their homes in a cheerless wilderness. Consequently in leaking log cabins in the woods, the sisters faced risky child births, sometimes alone, with the threat of wild animals, frostbite and starvation. And when their babies were asleep they scribbled for hours by the homespun smoky light of a rag dipped in pork fat!Writing had become a compulsive therapy.Eventually opttimism and hard work brought literary success. Sussana Moodie published "Roughing it in the Bush" and Catharine Parr Traille published "The Backwoods of Canada". But payment was abysmally low. Charlotte Gray draws you into her characters so deeply that you share their isolation and marvel at their hope, faith and determination. No wonder the book won a Canadian award for the Best non-fiction Book of the Year.