The deaths she witnessed were real.

The bears she killed were real.

The Bible she read was real.

The reality is what gives the story its specific gravity, and why it has generated so much more scholarly and creative attention than purely fictional treatments of similar themes.

The Rescue As The Beginning Of A New Story

When Marguerite de la Rocque stepped aboard the Breton fishing vessel — or was helped aboard, after years of isolation and the physical toll of surviving in extreme conditions — she was at the beginning of a new phase of her life about which we know almost nothing.

The return to France, the reception by her contemporaries, the process of reintegrating into a social world she had left years earlier — all of this is almost entirely undocumented.