1998: Charlotte Gray, Mrs. King

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Description

Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King is the superbly told story of a woman lost in the shadow of Canadian history. Daughter of the "Little Rebel," William Lyon Mackenzie, and mother of Canada's longest serving prime minister, Isabel Mackenzie King was intimately involved in the changing political and social landscape of Canada. Her son attempted to present her as the ideal woman, the epitome of motherhood and an angel of goodness and light. His biographers have portrayed her as an ambitious, grasping manipulator who pushed her eldest son into politics and then contrived to keep him a bachelor so that he could support the rest of his family.

Award-winning writer Charlotte Gray pulls Isabel Grace Mackenzie King into the light, revealing her to be a gritty, lively woman determined to escape the ignominy and disgrace of a youth spent in exile, and the desperate life of genteel poverty to which she was condemned as a married woman. Mrs. King is a highly absorbing portrait of our Canadian past.

Judges' Comments

Charlotte Gray's beautifully crafted and impeccably researched biography was considered by this year's panel of judges to be an outstanding example of the genre. Charlotte Gray has written a biography with the narrative power of a fine novel.

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• Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.