Isobel Gunn

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

At the turn of the 19th century, a young, pox-scarred, Orkney Island
peasant girl named Isobel Gunn is determined to escape the grinding
poverty of her class and gender. After disguising herself as a man, she
signs on as a fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company. For nearly a
year, she manages to pass herself off as a man, but is discovered when
she becomes pregnant by a man who threatened to reveal her real identity
unless she submitted to his unwanted sexual advances. Rejected by her
former workmates, Isobel is forced to choose between taking her child
home to Scotland to face a life of certain poverty and humiliation or
leaving her beloved baby behind at Fort Albany to be raised by
strangers.

This novel, by award-winning author Audrey Thomas, carries the reader
from the windswept Orkney Islands of northern Scotland to the wild
wastes of subarctic Canada, then back to Scotland. Deftly, Thomas
intertwines the diverse themes of poverty, prejudice, and
predestination. Most of Gunn’s tragic tale is told from the viewpoint
of Magnus Inkster, a brooding Orkney clergyman whose life is
inextricably (and inexplicably) linked to Isobel even though they are
separated by class, gender, and personality. Believing in a loving and
just God, Inkster’s faith is tested as he watches Gunn stagger from
one cruel twist of fortune to another. Several times, Inkster tries to
intervene but he is consistently thwarted by both fate and Gunn herself.
Eventually, Inkster learns to accept Gunn’s choices and the two become
allies, if not quite friends. Inkster’s relationship with God,
however, slowly dissolves, leaving him a hollow husk posing as a
clergyman.

Readers in the mood for a little Oatmeal Gothic should try this dour
wee tale.