The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor cover

The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor

by Sally Armstrong

goodread review: **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.'' **Charlotte Taylor's story is what you might get if you crossed Susanna Moodie and Jack Aubrey --- a delicious character and a great yarn.** Sally Armstrong has imagined an ancestor who possesses all the passion and daring that she herself has in abundance, and by the time we had finished our journey together through the trials and turbulence and the terrible beauty of the early days on the Miramichi, I wanted to claim Charlotte as my Ancestor, too.**---Mary Lou Finlay, Broadcaster and Former host of CBC Radio's ''As It Happens.''---back cover**

Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?