Mrs. King by Charlotte Gray ✔✔✔✔

I'm a fan of Charlotte Gray's. I read Sisters In the Wilderness, about Susannah Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill ( and I think every woman should read it, just so we can keep things in perspective when the fridge breaks down or we get a flat tire on the 401), and Flint and Feather, the biography of Pauline Johnson, whose poems were a part of our readers in elementary school, as well as the biography of Alexander Graham Bell ( I think the title is Reluctant Genius), so when I saw this title on the list of Canada Reads 2011 top 40 titles in non-fiction, I found it at our library and settled down to enjoy another story of a well-known Canadian.

And it was very enjoyable, and very informative. Isabel Mackenzie King was the daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie who led the 1837 revolt in Upper Canada, and the mother of William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was one of our greatest prime ministers. Willie, as he was known by his family, absolutely adored his mother, almost unnaturally so, and she herself, disappointed by her husband's lack of initiative and constant financial problems, relied almost exclusively on Willie for both financial and emotional support.

As a portrait of Toronto in the late 19th century, it was particularly interesting to me - the way people lived, the city limits ( Isabel was in her twenties before she ever went north of Eglinton Ave), the At Homes which the King women attended and hosted, even as they scraped together enough money to hold them, the class distinctions, and so on, so the book also is a social history of women at this time. It must be fascinating to do research like this. Fortunately the King family were all great letter-writers,so there must have been lots of material to work from. For example, while Willie was in Chicago, he sent a ten-page letter home once a week!!