Isola

Marguerite is born to money and expects to live quietly on it, and then she is orphaned and left in the charge of a man who is neither steady nor honest. He spends what should have been hers and takes her with him when he sails for New France, where she is far from anyone who might help her. She and her guardian's servant come to care for each other, and when that is found out the two of them are severely punished and put ashore on an island with nobody to rescue them. A girl who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair has to learn how to live through a winter that nobody has prepared her for.

The novel is based on the life of a real sixteenth-century woman, and its headings name survival, historical fiction, literary fiction and romance. The island, rather than the courts of France, is where most of the story takes place. The winter that closes over the island is what the second half of the book is built on, and it is there that Marguerite finds a faith she has never before needed.