Story summary
Samenvatting van Isobel
- 8 min. leestijd
- 10 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
In the Arctic, a Mountie helps an apparent widow haul a supposed coffin across the Barren and kisses her good night.
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Isobel in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 3 h 45 min3 h fast, 4 h 25 min slow
- Lengte
- 53.400 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Makkelijk short sentences, plain words
- Voor het eerst verschenen
- 1913by James Oliver Curwood
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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Isobel in short
Isobel is a story of love tested by the Law, set in a land that tests everything. Billy MacVeigh, a Mountie worn down by loneliness, meets a woman on the Barren and falls in love with her in one night. When he learns who she is, he must choose between his oath and his conscience.
What Isobel is about
What would you do if you met a lonely widow dragging a coffin across the frozen Barren in the dead of the Arctic night? Sergeant Billy MacVeigh of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police meets such a woman. Within hours he has given her his trust, his supper, his dried blue flower and his heart. By morning he learns what the long box really held.
Isobel is a northern romance by James Oliver Curwood, an American writer who set many of his adventures in the Canadian wilderness. You get blizzards, sled races, a gun fight in a log cabin, a lost child and a man who must weigh his duty against his conscience.
Voor wie is het?. For readers who love northern adventure, sled dogs and blizzards, and for anyone who enjoys old-fashioned romance with a loyal hero.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
Two Mounties and the loneliest cabin in the North
The story opens at Point Fullerton, a wind-beaten cabin on Hudson Bay. Sergeant Billy MacVeigh is finishing his half-year report, which tells of a hunted murderer named Scottie Deane. His partner, Private Pelliter, lies in a bunk close by, sick with something no medicine can cure.
Pelliter says it plainly. Nine months have passed without a woman's voice or another white man's face. He calls his fever the fever of loneliness, a kind of madness that splits the head. Billy promises to bring back a letter from the girl Pelliter is to marry.
Then a thin red rim of sun shows through the little window, the first in four months. Half an hour later Billy is on the trail with four dogs, racing for Fort Churchill. He reaches it in nine days and gathers medicine and nine letters for Pelliter. There is nothing for himself, and the gap stings. Before he leaves, a trapper tells him of a white man and a white woman seen near the Maguse River. Loneliness is the force that sets every road of this story in motion.
- 2Begin gratis met lezen
A widow and her coffin cross the Barren
On a clear, still night Billy crosses the edge of the Barren on snowshoes.
- 3Begin gratis met lezen
The note on the box changes the hunt
Billy wakes after seven hours of sleep.
- 4Begin gratis met lezen
Billy hunts the man he wants to save
Billy knows Bucky Smith will not sleep long.
- 5Begin gratis met lezen
The fight in the snow and the nine petals
Isobel looks at Billy with a rage that frightens him more than death.
- 6Begin gratis met lezen
Pelliter finds a little girl in an igloo
Far north at Fullerton, Pelliter counts the days with pencil marks on the door.
- 7Begin gratis met lezen
The chase from Fullerton to the forest
Billy finds nothing on the dead sailor to name the child.
- 8Begin gratis met lezen
Love that gives up what it wants
One idea runs under the whole story: real love can mean letting go.
- 9Begin gratis met lezen
The wilderness as comrade, danger and mirror
The setting is almost a character of its own.
- 10Begin gratis met lezen
A story told in scenes, symbols and storms
Curwood tells this story in short, vivid chapters, each with its own scene and its own cliffhanger.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Billy MacVeigh A young sergeant of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, lonely and kind, who must choose between his duty and his heart.
- Isobel Deane A brave, blue-eyed woman who will cross the Barren and risk everything to stay beside her husband and her child.
- Scottie Deane The hunted man with a price on his head, a fair and fearless husband who trusts those who treat him fairly.
- Pelliter Billy's feverish partner at Point Fullerton, who longs for the sweetheart waiting for him and finds a child instead.
- Bucky Smith A cruel corporal with an old grudge against Billy, who wants Deane's capture and revenge on the man who beat him.
- Little Mystery A golden-haired child found in an igloo, whose blue eyes with brown flecks are a clue that Billy cannot ignore.
- Kazan Pelliter's old one-eyed sled dog, loyal as any man, who leads the team through dark and danger.
How it ends (spoiler)
Billy loses Isobel's husband to a hard death on the edge of the Barren, and keeps his promise to care for her, even at the cost of his own heart. After a plague, a letter and a winter of famine, he believes she has died and goes searching for her child. In a sunlit garden in Montreal he finds little Isobel playing with a puppy, and her mother stands there alive. She welcomes him, and Billy stays.
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Vragen over Isobel
What is Isobel by James Oliver Curwood about?
It is a northern romance about a lonely Mountie, Billy MacVeigh, who meets a woman on the Barren, learns she is the wife of the man he hunts, and must choose between the Law and his heart.
Who is Isobel in the story?
Isobel Deane is the young wife of the fugitive Scottie Deane. She is brave and loyal, and she crosses the frozen Barren in a box to stay beside her husband and protect him from the Mounted Police.
What does the blue flower mean in Isobel?
Billy carries a dried blue flower he found alone in the wilderness. To him it stands for the purest and most beautiful thing in the world, a woman's spirit, and he gives it to Isobel.
Who is Little Mystery in the book?
Little Mystery is the name Pelliter gives to a golden-haired child he finds in an igloo after a fight with a sailor. She saves him from fever and sets the later events of the story moving.
Is Isobel easy to read and worth reading?
Its short chapters, clear scenes and warm voice make it approachable. Readers who like sled races, blizzards, Mounted Police and a love story tested by sacrifice will find plenty to enjoy.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Curwood, James Oliver. Isobel. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/isobel.
Curwood, J. O. (2026). Isobel. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/isobel (Original work published 1913)
Curwood, James Oliver. Isobel. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/isobel.
@book{curwood2026isobel,
author = {Curwood, James Oliver},
title = {Isobel},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/isobel},
note = {First published 1913}
}
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