Madame Zee
ABOUT
THE BOOK
It starts with a strange tightness in her chest, followed by a vision. A boy she doesn’t recognize. A man falling through ice. And finally the serene face of Honora, her dead sister. Mabel doesn’t know why she has these “daydreams.” As a young English girl at the dawn of the 20th century, all Mabel knows is that she desperately wants to understand these powerful, shameful episodes that make her so different.
Immigrating to Canada, Mabel tries to cover her secret life with a veneer of normalcy, yet she is propelled into confronting her gift. She becomes Madame Zee, disciple and lover to Brother XII, a charismatic Spiritualist cult leader installed in a Utopian colony on the verdant eastern shores of Vancouver Island. Then, in one shattering moment, Mabel must choose between her dream of understanding and the reality of truth.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
This fascinating fictional biography of Canadian immigrant Mabel Rowbotham tells the story of an intelligent woman’s struggle with the gift of clairvoyance and the challenge of being different. After failing as a teacher and a wife she later becomes known as Madam Zee, the disciple and lover of Brother XII, a charismatic Spiritualist leader of a cult on Vancouver Island.