National Network for Equitable Library Service

From the author of Macdonald, comes a new novel about an extraordinary love triangle set at the apex of Canada’s national life at the dawn of the twentieth century. A deeply absorbing novel of passion and politics, Laurier in Love reveals a side of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Canadians have never known him: romantic and idealistic, inspiring and seductive, yet conflicted and compromised, as he balances his time between his wife and his mistress. Elegant, silver-tongued Sir Wilfrid Laurier is just beginning his fabled career as one of the nation’s greatest leaders. Some Canadians revile him simply because he is French-Canadian and Roman Catholic, the first Prime Minister from Quebec. Keenly aware of the difficulties lying ahead, Laurier tells his devoted wife, Zoë Laurier, how much he needs her. At the same time, he assures his ambitious, literary lover, Émilie Lavergne, that she too is indispensable to him. Through the eyes of these two fascinating women, we see Laurier the orator, charming Americans in Chicago; Laurier the statesman, starring at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations in London; Laurier the conciliator, walking the perilous line between demands of English and French as Canada fights her first foreign war in distant South Africa. The cast of characters includes the aging monarch, the doomed President McKinley, a young Winston Churchill, an even younger Mackenzie King. Both epic and intimate in scale, Laurier in Love gives readers the authentic sense of the man, the era, the politics and the complex personal life Laurier led behind the scenes.