She was a noblewoman — her life had been shaped by the social world of the French aristocracy, by household management and religious observance and the responsibilities and pleasures of landed gentry.

She was not trained in hunting.

She was not trained in carpentry or shelter construction.

She was not trained in the foraging and food preservation techniques that a person would need to get through a winter on an uninhabited island.

What she had was a gun.

And whatever intelligence, determination, and physical resilience she could bring to bear on a situation that had no precedent in her experience or anyone else’s.

The fact that she eventually walked off that island alive is one of the more stunning facts in the history of European colonialism in North America.