Perdita

Historian Garth Hellyer is bemused when he is assigned to interview Marged Brice, a resident of Clarkson Home for The Aged as part of his work on the Longevity Project. Official records indicate that she is 134 years old, arousing suspicions of bureaucratic error or major fraud. 

When Garth finally breaches the hurdles to meeting her, he is intrigued. Marged, looking as old as polished stone, her sharp mind drifting to reverie, tells him she wants to die but Perdita won’t let her. Not too old to be charmed by Garth, she entrusts him with her journal which he takes with him to his cottage close to the Cape Prius lighthouse of Marged’s childhood. 

This remote peninsula on the Great Lakes was a summer respite for the wealthy, including a renowned artist who may have been Marged’s lover, and a prominent ornithologist whom Marged assisted. But Garth is also driven by his curiosity to learn about Perdita, the  name of an infant girl in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale who is left on a seacoast to die but is rescued by shepherds. 

Hilary Scharper masterfully constructs Marged’s story set in the dawn of  the 1900s and its impact on the unresolved issues in Garth’s life, offering us a glorious romance of gothic and modern.  Fans of Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Possession will enjoy the rich pageant of conflicting passions, wild storms, and the mystery of the supernatural. 

Hilary Scharper who lives in Toronto, spent a decade as a lighthouse keeper on the Bruce Peninsula with her husband. She also is author of a story collection, Dream Dresses and God and Caesar at the Rio Grande (University of  Minnesota Press) which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award.  She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and is currently Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto.