Madame Jane

Just after the end of the War of 1812, when this country’s frontier was the Mississippi River, 14-year-old Jane Fisher married the most powerful, most ruthless fur trader in Prairie du Chien, the western outpost of the American Fur Company. To Joseph Rolette’s employees and the others who gossiped about her, she was Madame Joseph.

Jane and the people who knew her were witnesses to the changes the fur trade brought to the lives of the settlers and the original inhabitants. The novel combines evidence from actual 19th century letters and court records with speculation about whether Jane Fisher Rolette, the first woman in Wisconsin Territory to file for a divorce, was truly the independent woman that Hercules Dousman, Joseph’s business partner, rechristened Madame Jane.