The Woman Who Went Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel (UK) / Queen of the Mist (US/CAN)
This novel retells the true story of Annie Edson Taylor who, as a sixty-three-year-old debut ’stunter’, went over Niagara Falls in a pickle barrel in 1901 and was the first to survive the fall. This is Annie’s story reimagined in a button-holing, fast-paced and often comedic first-person narration. Cauchi’s Annie insists on acting wild and not disappearing from society just because she is in her sixties and poor. Annie’s stunt is framed as an act of catharsis for her grief over the loss of her husband at Gettysburg and of her infant son.
Annie Edson Taylor’s stated motivation for the stunt was to make money to support two friends. Cauchi reconstructs these friends as the fictional Mrs. Lapointe, terminally ill and running a boarding house which never breaks even; and Matilda, who arrives at the boarding house with her baby. They form a community of women who have been made destitute by intolerable domestic circumstances, rescued and homed by Mrs. Lapointe, actively assisted by Annie. Compassion and the sanctity of homeliness are strong themes in Cauchi’s version of Annie’s story, a sanctity emphasised by the plight of the boarding house women.
Annie is inspired by indigenous folktales where women trapped by circumstance find a kind of freedom in self-determined action, even if this proves fatal. Cauchi shows us the social situation of women who could be legally and economically ineffective, even against villains, without male supporters. The pace naturally slows after the lead-up to Annie’s stunt detailing the technical requirements, and the climactic fall. Then the story becomes one of struggle to maintain ownership of her achievement in a society which does not take even strong women seriously. Cauchi takes us on an enjoyable ride of a tale, told from the heart.
