One evening, ten or fifteen years ago, Peggy Joque Williams told me about les filles du roy—the King’s Daughters. “King” as in Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, who reigned from 1643 to 1715 and built the Palace of Versailles.
I remember our conversation vividly. A few of us ink-stained wretches used to meet for early dinner at the now-defunct Sunroom Café, up a long flight of stairs at 638 State Street in Madison, before the monthly meeting of the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum in nearby Lowell Hall. The soups, wraps, and pastries were delicious, usually with a nice glass of wine on the side. Maybe those five-dollar glasses of wine were the reason they went out of business.
On this particular night, Peggy and I were the first to arrive, and over appetizers she shared her idea for a historical novel.
“The Daughters of the King,” she said, “were unattached young women of good character who went to New France—Quebec and Montreal—in the late 1600s at King Louis’s behest. The king paid for their passage and gave them dowries and trousseaux, on the condition they would marry one of the many single men in the colony. It was a plan to populate the French colonies in the New World.”
She went on to say that her own French-Canadian ancestors came down from one of more of the King’s Daughters. “Basically, they had their pick among the hardiest and most successful of the trappers, traders, farmers, and merchants who built French Canada.”
To me it sounded like a wonderful book—an adventure set among hunters and trappers, priests and soldiers, Frenchmen and indigenous tribespeople competing and cooperating for success in a rugged northwoods environment.
Fast-forward to 2024, and Peggy released her historical epic Courting the Sun: A Novel of Versailles. What? Versailles? Hall of Mirrors? What happened to the Canadian outback?
Because Peggy is my friend and I was excited for her new book release, I read it. It turns out she had to go through Versailles to get to Quebec. In Courting the Sun, her heroine, resourceful teenager Sylvienne d’Aubert, navigates the glittering, decadent world of Louis XIV’s royal court, rubbing shoulders with such historical characters as the actor/playwright Molière and the Marquise de Montespan, Louis’ official mistress.
“Williams’s sharp dialog, realistic characters, and rich descriptions of Bourbon court life keep you enthralled in ever-changing developments,” I wrote at the time. “The end of the story is more a beginning than an end, and one is left impatient to read the next chapter.”
Now, with Braving the Dawn, published in January 2026, Peggy delivers on that promise. And it was well worth the wait.
Sylvienne, now a bit older and a lot wiser, has been banished by the Sun King and arrives in Quebec among a shipload of filles du roy. Her own status is unclear. She meets, in quick succession, a protective order of nuns, a group of Native American girls, an amused militia captain, the governor-general of New France, the colony’s enigmatic administrator, and a notorious coureur du bois—a woods-runner—who trades in furs without a permit. Despite a plethora of woodsmen vying for her hand, she is resolved to avoid marriage. . . . Oh, did I mention she is concealing a pregnancy, a widowhood, and a secret lover?
There is plenty of plot to thicken in this tale of the French colonial frontier, and my friend Peggy handles it expertly. It’s useful to have read Courting the Sun first, because it adds depth to your understanding of Sylvienne and her motives—but it’s not really necessary. You can start with Braving the Dawn and find yourself caught up in an irresistible story. Either way, do yourself a favor and get into the compelling and accurate historical fiction of Peggy Joque Williams.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers
Your New Favorite Writer
