Isobel Gunn

In the summer of 1806, a young Orkney woman disguised herself as a man and signed on with the Company of Adventurers to work in what was then called Rupert's Land. For a year and a half, she hid her identity, her deception revealed only when she was about to give birth. In less than an hour, she turned from John Fubbister into Isobel Gunn. Very little is known about the real woman. Audrey Thomas takes the threads of Isobel Gunn's story and turns them into a compelling novel about an unusual woman and the effect she had on those around her.

Audrey Thomas was born in Binghamton, New York, in 1953, and has lived in Canada since 1959. She divides her time between Galiano Island in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia and Victoria. She has published more than a dozen works of fiction. Her novels include Mrs. Blood (1970), Latakia (1979), Intertidal Life (1984), and Isobel Gunn (1999). "Natural History," a prize winner in the 1980 CBC Canadian Literary Awards, was published in her collection Real Mothers (1981).