Thursday, October 13, 2016

Review: "Promised to the Crown," Aimie K. Runyan


By Paul Carrier

Aimee K. Runyan’s debut novel taps a rich historical vein by focusing on a topic that is little-known to American readers, despite its importance in the colonization and development of North America.

Promised to the Crown explores the lives of a group of French women known as “filles du roi.” From 1663 to 1673, some 800 of these “daughters of the king” emigrated to the colony of New France, whose population was disproportionately male at the time, resulting in few marriages and slowing the growth of the small settlement in what is now Canada.

These young women were wards of the crown who were recruited by the French government and transported to New France at the king’s expense. The filles du roi are revered figures in French-Canadian history, and are sometimes described as the mothers of the colony. I have several of them in my family tree.

The lives of these women are rarely fictionalized, at least in English, although Suzanne Desrochers did just that in her 2012 novel Bride of New France, which focused on one fille du roi. Runyan’s novel has three such protagonists: Rose Barré, Nicole Deschamps and Elisabeth Martin, who become and remain fast friends despite their different backgrounds and the varied courses that their lives take over time.

Elisabeth is a Parisian who loves working in her father’s bakery until his premature death prompts her mother to try to force her into an arranged marriage. She escapes to New France.

Rose's mother dies giving birth, and when her well-to-do merchant father passes away years later, she moves in with an aunt and a sexually abusive uncle. The aunt eventually discovers that her husband is a rapist but she accuses Rose of seducing him. Rose is quickly shipped off to the infamous Salpêtrière, a hospital and prison that housed prostitutes, the mentally ill, disabled people, the criminally insane and the poor. Offered a chance to start a new life in New France, Rose takes it.

As for Nicole, a scholarly young woman raised on a farm in Normandy, she can read, write and perform basic math. She's engaged to a young Frenchman whom she loves, but when her father decides he has to use her dowry to buy land, the wedding is called off and Nicole’s future suddenly looks bleak. So she too agrees to cross the Atlantic. The three women meet aboard ship.
 
New France has its rewards, not the least of which is the relative comfort of living with the Ursuline nuns while the newcomers await marriage proposals. But life is far from blissful. The winters are brutal in a land where newborns die with frightening regularity. The women feel pressured to choose husbands quickly, even though they barely know the strangers who seek to marry them.

Runyan has a solid command of her setting and time period. While working on a master's degree thesis, the onetime French teacher “was fortunate enough to win a generous grant from the Québec government to study onsite for three months which enabled the detailed research necessary for her work,” according to her publisher, Kensington Books.

The author captures many of the intriguing aspects of life in 17th-century New France: the colony’s obsession with boosting the birthrate; the strong appeal of gossip in a small community with few diversions; the chauvinism of some eligible bachelors; the prominence of the Ursuline nuns as teachers and caregivers; and the complex relationship between French settlers and Indians.

I may not belong to the intended demographic for this novel, with its heavy emphasis on courtship, marriage and domesticity. I love historical fiction, but there’s more than a dollop of romance here. Still, Promised to the Crown is vivid and carefully plotted, with strong protagonists whose courage and fortitude serve them well. There are memorable secondary characters too, including a highly intelligent but conflicted Huron girl and a petty, vindictive priest spiteful enough to give Christianity a bad name.

Promised to the Crown will appeal to readers with an interest in Canadian history, particularly that of New France, whose legacy lives on in contemporary Canada and sections of the United States. Runyan explains in an author’s note that two-thirds of today’s millions of Québécois and other French-speaking Canadians share a genetic link with les filles du roi. By focusing on three fictional stand-ins, Runyan allows readers to imagine the joys and setbacks of the brave French women who sailed into the unknown more than 350 years ago, to help found a nation.

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