The White Kingdom

They left a lady to die. A huntress survived. In the glittering, hypocritical world of 16th-century France, Marguerite de la Rocque is a woman shackled by her station. As an unmarried noblewoman of property, she is a prize to be won, a pawn in the games of powerful men. Her greatest adversary is her own kinsman, the ambitious and fanatically pious Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval, a man whose favor with the King is matched only by his crushing debts. When Marguerite's passionate, rebellious affair with a young officer is discovered, Roberval sees his chance-to punish her sin, to reassert his authority, and to solve his financial problems in one monstrous act. His judgment is absolute: Marguerite is marooned on the infamous Isle of Demons, a desolate rock in the Canadian wilderness rumored to be a gateway to Hell itself. Abandoned and left to perish, she is forced to watch as her companions, her lover, and her own newborn child are consumed by the island's brutal indifference. Plunged into a world of solitude and madness, she must make a choice: surrender to the abyss or be reborn from it. In a stunning act of will, she transforms herself into a master of her harsh environment, a huntress who usurps the throne of the island's most fearsome predator-the great white bear. But her incredible story of survival against all odds is only the beginning. Rescued years later and returned to a France that has already romanticized her trauma into a convenient fable, she finds herself in a new wilderness-a civilized world of lies, intrigue, and patriarchal injustice. The man who tried to kill her is now a celebrated war hero, and her truth is the most dangerous story she can tell. She must now fight a final, more cunning battle: not for her life, but for her legacy. Based on an astonishing true story, this sweeping historical thriller is a breathtaking novel of survival, vengeance, and the quiet, revolutionary power of a woman who refused to be erased. In the treacherous court of 16th-century France, noblewoman Marguerite de la Rocque is a woman of dangerous independence. When her illicit affair with a young officer is discovered, her powerful and pious kinsman, Jean-François de Roberval, enacts a merciless punishment. She is marooned on the dreaded Isle of Demons, a godforsaken rock in the Canadian wilderness, and left for dead. But Roberval underestimated the woman he sought to erase. Stripped of everything, Marguerite endures a brutal ordeal of starvation, loss, and solitude that transforms her from a lady into a legend. Forging a new life from the raw materials of survival, she becomes a master of the wild, a huntress who conquers the island's most terrifying predator. Her eventual rescue is not an end to her story, but the beginning of a new, more complex war-a psychological thriller fought not for survival, but for the truth against a world that has already turned her life into a lie.