Isabel Morton’s prominent Nova Scotia family wants the best for their twenty-four-year-old daughter—a suitable marriage—but Isabel will have none of it. She wants to be free, even if it means she must live as an “old maid” in a garret. Then she meets William Wishart, who offers her the freedom to follow her own stars if she marries him.
But how does a woman follow her own stars in a culture where women are the property of their fathers, or if married, their husbands, and are to be meek, pious, and subservient? With no access to representative government, no right to vote, how can women be free? Isabel tries to find a way through many twists and turns of fate until, at last, she realizes that freedom for herself is not enough; she chooses to work for women's suffrage in order to gain freedom for all women and their daughters and granddaughters.
Spanning the years 1837 to 1873 and based on the author’s own family, this work of historical fiction follows Isabel from bucolic Upper Dyke Village to gritty Halifax, from placid Shelburne to turbulent Saint John, NB, and back to her native Kings County, Nova Scotia, in her quest for freedom.
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Isabel: The Quest for Freedom is an engaging, delightful, and well-researched story with a fascinating main character. Isabel is an intelligent and outspoken woman who overcomes the traditional role society attempts to thrust upon her to create a full and satisfying life.
– Bretton Loney, author of Unsettling Time and Joe Howe’s Ghost
Carolyn was born in Nova Scotia and is descended from many of the New England Planter families who first came to Cornwallis Township, Kings County, Nova Scotia, in 1760. She was unaware of this part of her family history until after she retired and began to follow in her mother’s footsteps and continue her family research. The degree of her connection to these New England Planters was exemplified when she read a story about a church meeting of elders in the 1760s and knew she was related to five of the six men mentioned. In 1799, her great-great-great- grandfather, the Reverend William Forsyth of Scotland, became the minister of the Congregational Church at Chipmans Corner in the Township. During her research, she found her first cousins once removed and Forsyth descendants like herself, William McKay and Susanne Daley, who, among other things, sent her the booklet The Female Sex by the Reverend William Thomas Wishart inscribed with Isabel Morton Wishart’s initials. It seemed the stars had aligned for Carolyn to write this novel.
Carolyn has previously written two works of historical fiction, William Forsyth: Land of Hopes and Dreams and Traitors, Cannibals, Highlanders, and Vikings, as well as a middle-grade children’s book, The Last Witch on Skye.
Carolyn is an ordained minister in The United Church of Canada (retired) and has also worked in health information management and post-secondary education. She loves travelling to Scotland, especially to the Isle of Skye, her paternal family home for thousands of years. She is a member of the MacNeacail Clan and enjoys all things Highland Scottish, especially tartans and bagpipes. She enjoys travelling with her three sisters while doing research, as they are all birds of a feather.
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