Waiting for the Queen by Joanna Higgins (review)

A number of aristocrats fortunate enough to escape during the French Revolution found refuge in the wilderness of Pennsylvania, where in 1793 they formed a makeshift community that would await the arrival of Queen Marie Antoinette and her children and maintain her until their hope for a reestablished regency would be fulfilled. This quirky historical footnote inspires Higgins' fictional tale of pampered Eugenie, aghast at the rude cabin in which she's expected to live, and Hannah, a Quaker girl whose father and brother help construct the shelters and who will work for a year as servant to two aristocrat families. That a friendship will form between the two is, of course, a literary inevitability, but amity is hard won, and Higgins draws each character with sensitive precision. Eugenie is certainly a spoiled brat by frontier standards, but she is very understandably a product of an imbedded worldview. Likewise, Hannah's tendency to ponder and weigh each ritual and duty before complying often seems tedious, but it is in keeping with her family's habit of reflection and conscience formation. As the French aristocrats and their American hosts muddle through the physical discomforts and language difficulties of the first year, the community is further divided on the issue of a slaveholder who abuses his slaves and whether they can set their own community rules in a land that officially sanctions slavery. Sci-fi writers would be hard pressed to envision as jarring a culture clash as is supplied here by early American history. An historical note is included.