The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor

Hardcover, 416 pages

English language

Published March 13, 2007 by Random House Canada.

ISBN:: 978-0-679-31404-2

(1 review)

goodread review: Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica with her lover, the family’s black butler. Soon after reaching shore, Charlotte’s lover died of yellow fever, leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge with the Mi’kmaq of what is present-day New Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man. Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and unusual woman and delivers living history with all the drama and sweep of a novel.''

Charlotte Taylor's story is what you might get if you crossed Susanna Moodie and Jack Aubrey --- a delicious character and a great yarn. …

goodread review: Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica with her lover, the family’s black butler. Soon after reaching shore, Charlotte’s lover died of yellow fever, leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge with the Mi’kmaq of what is present-day New Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man. Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and unusual woman and delivers living history with all the drama and sweep of a novel.''

Charlotte Taylor's story is what you might get if you crossed Susanna Moodie and Jack Aubrey --- a delicious character and a great yarn. Sally Armstrong has imagined an ancestor who possesses all the passion and daring that she herself has in abundance, and by the time we had finished our journey together through the trials and turbulence and the terrible beauty of the early days on the Miramichi, I wanted to claim Charlotte as my Ancestor, too.---Mary Lou Finlay, Broadcaster and Former host of CBC Radio's ''As It Happens.''---back cover

3 editions

crabbygirl reviewed The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Sally Armstrong

Review of 'The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

a fascinating read if most details were true, but (as a work classified as fiction) it's difficult to know which parts were embellished with detail, or made up entirely. or perhaps records simply don't exist. case in point: charlotte has 10 children who all survive infancy and childhood - such a remarkable feat, and one that charlotte takes great pride in. but were there other children's whose records went missing?
she outlived 4 husbands (ok, 3 husbands and 1 lover), lived easily among the mik'mak, and had her name on the first property deeds of the miramichi. she must have been a force to be reckoned with... her stories being passed from generation to generation. remarkable? lucky? a witch? who knows how she truly got her fame. so her great, great, great granddaughter tried to pin down a story that she could be proud of. it's a story that is …

a fascinating read if most details were true, but (as a work classified as fiction) it's difficult to know which parts were embellished with detail, or made up entirely. or perhaps records simply don't exist. case in point: charlotte has 10 children who all survive infancy and childhood - such a remarkable feat, and one that charlotte takes great pride in. but were there other children's whose records went missing?
she outlived 4 husbands (ok, 3 husbands and 1 lover), lived easily among the mik'mak, and had her name on the first property deeds of the miramichi. she must have been a force to be reckoned with... her stories being passed from generation to generation. remarkable? lucky? a witch? who knows how she truly got her fame. so her great, great, great granddaughter tried to pin down a story that she could be proud of. it's a story that is too tainted by today's politically correct values and knowledge of the future, but it's hard to escape the mindset of our current culture.

Subjects

Canada - General
History / Canada
History - General History