There’s little in the opening pages to suggest this 2025 novel will turn into a great adventure yarn replete with the hand-knife beheading of an attacking polar bear. It’s the early 1500s and orphaned French noblewoman Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval is living at the whims of her cousin and protector, who steals her fortune and seems to be grooming her for marriage to himself. She is forced to sail to America aboard his colonizing ship, where she finds forbidden love with his assistant. Big mistake. The cousin abandons them on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, where they endure savage winters and face not one, but two polar bears to survive. It is indeed a yarn, and a powerful indictment of the constraints of class and gender. Not until the very end did I learn it was based on a real story.