Product Description

A graceful biography that was a #1 national bestseller, Flint & Feather confirms Charlotte Gray’s position as a master biographer, a writer with a rare gift for transforming a historical character into a living, breathing woman who immediately captures our imagination.

In Flint & Feather, Charlotte Gray explores the life of this nineteenth-century daughter of a Mohawk chief and English gentlewoman, creating a fascinating portrait of a young woman equally at home on the stage in her “Indian” costume and in the salons of the rich and powerful. Uncovering Pauline Johnson’s complex and dramatic personality, Flint & Feather is studded with triumph and tragedy, mystery and romance—a first-rate biography blending turn-of-the-century Canadian history and the vibrant story of a woman whose unforgettable voice still echoes through the years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41698 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-11
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.ca
In Flint & Feather, biographer Charlotte Gray tackles the extraordinary life and times of one of Canada's most colourful and enigmatic figures, E. Pauline Johnson (also known by her great-grandfather's Mohawk name, Tekahionwake). The daughter of a prim, British-born woman and a flamboyant Mohawk chief, Johnson spent her unusual and relatively privileged childhood in a mansion on the Six Nations Reserve in Upper Canada. As a young, unmarried woman, she relied on her writing to make a living, and her recitals became so popular that she spent decades criss-crossing the continent and the Atlantic, mesmerizing audiences with her Indian garb and poetry. Literary recognition came in her final years with the publication of Legends of Vancouver. Throughout her life, Johnson defied Victorian--and her mother’s--notions of a woman’s role and comportment in society; she challenged white prejudices about First Nations people through her poetry and performances; and she harmonized her own, often conflicted feelings about her dual cultural affiliations--in the process becoming an exemplar of racial coexistence.

Charlotte Gray brings her considerable biographical talent to bear on a worthy subject. As she goes through Johnson's life, year by year, liberally interspersing excerpts from poetry and letters along the way, she gives her readers a very real sense of the life that Johnson lived. Gray evokes the sensuousness of the places Johnson found herself in, rural and urban alike. She explores Johnson's complex, often strained family relationships. She delves into the mysteries surrounding the “Indian princess,” casting light on a few, putting forth the various theories on others, and speculating on what will forever remain unknowable, lost to the conflagration following her death to cancer. Gray also provides the crucial sociohistorical and political context: changing attitudes towards First Nations people and mixed marriages; the antislavery movement in the States; Victorian mores and attitudes toward women--in particular, women of the stage; the budding suffragette movement; allegiances formed with the First Nations people, and betrayed; and the importance of canoeing in the cultural life of the times, and for Johnson's own sense of well-being. Flint & Feather is not only a meticulously crafted work of scholarship, but a moving narrative that draws its readers in and propels them through Johnson's life with the same indomitable vivacity with which she lived it, right up to the end. --Diana Kuprel

About the Author
Charlotte Gray is the award-winning author of Sisters in the Wilderness, which was a national bestseller for over a year, and won the CBA Libris Award 2000 and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award in Ontario History. It was listed in the Globe and Mail 100 Best Books, the Quill & Quire Best Books, the Ottawa Citizen Hot Type “Can’t Miss Guide,” as well as being shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Prize. Gray’s earlier biography, Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King (Viking, 1997) was equally honored: it was a national bestseller, winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction, winner of the Canadian Authors Association Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography, winner of a Heritage Toronto Commendation, as well as being named to the Maclean’s Favorite Books of the Year list and shortlisted for a Governor General’s award. A graduate of Oxford University and former Ottawa editor of Saturday Night magazine, Charlotte Gray lives in Ottawa with her family.