"I discovered Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval in the middle of the night on a family trip to Montreal nearly twenty years ago. I was sitting up in bed nursing my then six-week-old daughter while reading a stack of library books I had brought along for my sons. In an illustrated children’s book about Jacques Cartier, I read a passage that stopped me short. It went something like this: In 1542, a nobleman named Jean-François Roberval sailed separately with colonists to meet with Cartier in what is now called Canada. Roberval brought along his young ward, Marguerite de la Rocque who annoyed him by having an affair aboard ship. Roberval marooned Marguerite and her lover on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence where she managed to survive for more than two years while fighting off polar bears."