Douglas Glover has written the story of a French girl who went to Canada, gave birth to a fish, turned into a bear and fell in love with a famous author. Based on a little-known incident from Canadian history, Elle chronicles the adventures of Sieur de Roberval's wayward 19-year-old niece who was set ashore in 1542 (during Jacques Cartier's ill-fated third and last attempt to colonize Canada) as a punishment for lasciviousness, along with her old nurse and tennis-playing lover.
A lusty Rabelaisian riff on the discovery of the New World that has been described as a "mad creation myth dreamed by a French Eve." Elle is a libidinous 16th-century society belle turned Robinson Crusoe ... she takes on the Canadian winter with little more than a tennis racket (for whacking sea birds over the head) and a trunk full of ball gowns ... and survives.
