A spellbinding debut

Ottawa writer Jennifer Chevalier brings a documentarian’s keen eye for detail and weaves a compelling tale of two sisters who strive to improve their lot in 17th-century New France in her debut novel, The Winter Witch.

Chevalier, who worked for the BBC in London and is now a senior producer for CBC Radio’s The House, tells the story of Élisabeth and Marthe, two “filles de roi” — young women sent with royal dowries to marry French settlers in North America. When their father dies, they can’t keep their farm in Normandy going, so the sisters take the last option available to them.

Élisabeth is heartbroken at leaving her beau, Remy, and is crushed by the sin and scandal of her miscarriage. She’s convinced she’s been cursed, and seeks salvation. Of their destination, Ville-Marie (in current-day Montreal), where her village priest said the Jesuits saved souls despite snow, starvation and torture, she says, “Imagine surviving simply through holy deeds and divine will? I think … I think miracles must happen in such a sacred place.”

Marthe, for her part, wants a hardworking husband in New France to escape poverty and loneliness. “I intend to stay in town,” she asserts to the other prospective brides. “I have had my fill of reaping grain and shearing sheep. I want to marry a smith or a cooper. Or any craftsman, really.”

Élisabeth convinces Marthe that one of their compatriots, the finely dressed and enigmatic Jeanne Roy, is actually a witch. Élisabeth secretly hopes she can undo the curse upon her.

Alternating the sisters’ viewpoints, Chevalier shows each to be an unreliable narrator.

Élisabeth sees sorcery and doom everywhere. Marthe’s ambition to marry well and become an entrepreneur blinds her to the threat of the lecherous governor of Montreal, de Lafredière, even though her first impression of him is that “he looked like a leopard on the prowl.”

He’s not the only danger. Along for the journey is witch hunter Father de Sancy, who claims to have smashed a coven at a nunnery in Louviers: “It took us many months and some of the nuns were quite broken after their ordeal.”

The devout priest relishes describing the punishments he meted out, and seems keen to do so again.

Less ominous but no less potent is Barbe Poulin, the widow of the baker that Marthe’s new husband apprenticed with and who remains living with the newlyweds. A superstitious busybody in Ville-Marie, she proves capable of stirring up the entire town when it suits her.

Historical novels risk flouting accuracy for the sake of story or getting bogged down in minutiae at the expense of plot or character. Chevalier, however, crafts an engaging tale in the sisters’ efforts to carve out a new life in 1670 Montreal that sugar-coats neither colonialism nor life in a frontier town.

Élisabeth’s superstitions overwhelm her and jeopardize her own new marriage, as she abandons the idea of ever returning to France. Along with Barbe Poulin, she turns the village, including Father de Sancy, against Jeanne — not knowing that Marthe, who is pregnant, badly needs Jeanne’s help.

“Marthe, please,” she says, “I was not myself. The demon, it … No, it was not the demon, it was me. I made a grave error. And I shall set it right.”

It makes for a story that’s hard to put down — not to mention one that, given our modern dilemma with misinformation and mob mentality, will ring all too true.

David Jón Fuller is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His debut novel, Venue 13, is forthcoming from Turnstone Press.