The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Sally Armstrong

The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Sally Armstrong

Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica with her lover, the family's black butler. Soon after reaching shore, Charlotte's lover died of yellow fever, leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge with the Mi'kmaq of what is present-day New Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man. Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and unusual woman and delivers living history with all the drama and sweep of a novel.

Excerpt from from The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor

Every summer of my youth, we would travel from the family cottage at Youghall Beach to visit my mother's extended clan in Tabusintac near the Miramichi River. And at every gathering, just as much as there would be chickens to chase and newly cut hay to leap in, so there would be an ample serving of stories about Charlotte Taylor. . .

She was a woman with a past. The potboilers about her ran like serials from summer to summer, at weddings and funerals and whenever the clan came together. She wasn't exactly presented as a gentlewoman, although it was said that she came from an aristocratic family in England. Nor was there much that seemed genteel about the person they always referred to as old Charlotte. Words like lover and land grabber drifted down from the supper table to where we kids sat on the floor. There were whoops of laughter at her indiscretions, followed by sideways glances at us. But for all the stories passed around, it was clear the family still had a powerful respect for a woman long dead. We owed our very existence to her, and the anecdotes the older generation told suggested that their own fortitude and guile were family traits passed down from the ancestral matriarch. For as long as I can remember, I've tried to imagine the real life Charlotte Taylor lived and, more, how she ever survived.

As a journalist, SALLY ARMSTRONG has covered stories in conflict zones all around the world. Her firsthand stories have garnered her the Amnesty International Media Award four times, as well as recognition around the world, from Bosnia and Somalia to Congo and Afghanistan. Armstrong is the author of numerous books, including Veiled Threat: The Secret Strength of Afghanistan's Women; The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor; Bitter Roots, Gentle Shoots: The Uncertain Destiny of Afghanistan's Women; and Ascension of Women: A New Era is Dawning for Every Mother's Daughter. In 2017, Armstrong received her fourth Amnesty International Canada Media Prize, along with photographer/videographer Peter Bregg, for their work in Iraq, as well as the Gold Award for Investigative Journalism at The Canadian Online Publishing Gala for their work on the Yazidis, titled Resisting Genocide. Armstrong traveled throughout the country in 2019 to deliver the CBC Massey Lecture series, discussing how improving the position of women around the world is critical to our existence.

Power Shift: The Longest Revolution, a book based on her lectures, is now available. Armstrong was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019 for her contributions. Armstrong has ten honorary doctorate degrees and was a previous member of the United Nations' International Women's Commission. She spends part of each year in Bathurst, her childhood vacation home, near the location where Charlotte Taylor first set foot in New Brunswick, when she is not going to war zones.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679314059
ISBN 10	0679314059
Title	The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor
Author	Sally Armstrong
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Vintage Canada
Year published	2008-02-12
Number of pages	432
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.