from André Thevet’s Cosmographie Universelle
Marooned on a frigid island in 1641, a young French woman single-handedly fought off polar bears, starvation, and loneliness, buried her lover, her maidservant, and her newborn child, and spent almost two full years completely alone — except, of course, for the 100,000 demons whose screams were her nightly companions. That she lived through it all is a miracle – and a mystery: How did Marguerite de La Rocque survive the infamous “Isle of Demons” – and how much of this enigmatic tale can we ever actually know?
Olivia interviews Allegra Goodman, author of the award-winning historical novel Isola.
illustration from André Thevet’s Cosmographie Universelle
Library of Congress
(Possible locations of the Isle of Demons circled in blue)
Allegra Goodman’s new book This Is Not About Us is a Late Show With Stephen Colbert Book Club Selection. Her novels include Isola (a Reese’s Book Club selection and Libby award winner), 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 anthologized 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. Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Music featured in this episode provided by
Emily A. Sprague, Brian Bolger, pATCHES, Sir Cubworth, Track Tribe, and the Tudor Consort
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