Nearly five centuries have passed since Marguerite de la Rocque was left on an island in the Gulf of St.

Lawrence.

In that time, the world has changed in ways that would make the specific circumstances of her story impossible to reproduce — the North Atlantic is heavily trafficked, the islands of the Gulf are known and mapped and connected to the Canadian coastal communities that have grown up around them, and the idea of leaving a woman on an island as punishment for moral transgression belongs firmly to a historical era that has officially ended, whatever its informal successors might be.

But the story’s core remains relevant in ways that are not simply historical.