Isabel: The Quest for Freedom - Paperback

by Carolyn J. Nicholson (Author)

Isabel Morton's prominent Nova Scotia family wants the best for their twenty-four-year-old daughter-a suitable marriage-but Isabel will have none of it. She wants to be free, even if it means she must live as an "old maid" in a garret. Then she meets William Wishart, who offers her the freedom to follow her own stars if she marries him.

But how does a woman follow her own stars in a culture where women are the property of their fathers, or if married, their husbands, and are to be meek, pious, and subservient? With no access to representative government, no right to vote, how can women be free? Isabel tries to find a way through many twists and turns of fate until, at last, she realizes that freedom for herself is not enough; she chooses to work for women's suffrage in order to gain freedom for all women and their daughters and granddaughters.

Spanning the years 1837 to 1873 and based on the author's own family, this work of historical fiction follows Isabel from bucolic Upper Dyke Village to gritty Halifax, from placid Shelburne to turbulent Saint John, NB, and back to her native Kings County, Nova Scotia, in her quest for freedom.