A revealing and engaging portrait of New Brunswick on the eve of Confederation

A devastating wildfire, subtle threats of annexation, and New Brunswick’s uneasy sense of itself in the face of American persuasions all figure prominently in Adèle Dubois, a novel first published in 1865 and as relevant today as it was 160 years ago.

Opening to a mystery, and rife with local nuance, larger-than-life characters, and gothic flashes typical of the romantic impulses of its time, the novel offers a rich portrait of New Brunswick on the eve of Confederation. On the eve, that is, of deciding whether provincial loyalties would be colonial or continental, our values British or American.

Those tensions play out in a fictional but familiar Miramichi region where the rub of religions and ethnicities shines a light on settlement patterns and debates in the province.

Anchoring the whole is a plucky young heroine who is every bit as spirited as the red-haired islander who would emerge in a neighbouring province some two generations later.

Mrs. William T. Savage was the married name of Mary Langdon Bradbury who born on 2 April 1817 in York, Maine, just north of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The eldest daughter of Jeremiah Bradbury and Mary Langdon Storer, she spent her formative years in the rural town of Alfred, Maine, where she acquired a “superior education” in a family “of rare domestic culture” that was known for its religious devotions and public standing.