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of flour with the miller in payment for his services. But even better harvests would not have saved the families from the consequences of a major depression throughout North America in the mid1830s, which brought economic stagnation to the backwoods. By the fall of 1835, Susanna had sold most of her own clothes (with the exception of her wedding dress and the handmade baby clothes Mrs. Strickland had sent from England) so that she could pay her servants. Soon the only servants who remained were ones who had nowhere else to go and stayed on without wages. The hired men disappeared; the ambitious plans for outbuildings were shelved; each family began to retrench. Hunger and want hovered like harpies over the little cabins in the woods. And all four adults—Thomas and Catharine, John and Susanna—began to look around for other ways to make money. At first it was a quiet search. It rapidly became desperate.

Susanna had continued to write poetry and sketches. She sent them off to two New York–based publications, the Albion and the North American Magazine, and several Toronto–based periodicals, including the Canadian Magazine and the Canadian Literary Magazine. They were well received by editors who appreciated the “former Susanna Strickland.” The American poet Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, editor of the North American Magazine, described Susanna as having “genius as lofty as her heart is pure.” Susanna’s relief at this recognition was almost craven. She replied to Fairfield in January 1835: “Though residing in a small log hut, in the backwoods of Upper Canada, and constantly engaged in the everyday cares of domestic life, I am not so wholly indifferent to praise, as not to feel highly gratified when the spontaneous outpourings of a mind, vividly alive to the beauties of Nature, meets with the approbation of men, of superior worth and genius.” But poetry did not put bread on the Moodie table. Fairfield’s payments did not even cover the cost of Susanna’s paper and pens.

Catharine was also finding that writing did not pay. The Backwoods of Canada was enthusiastically reviewed when it appeared in London early in 1836. The London Spectator praised the author’s elegance of mind, modesty and “sound practical views,” and declared that “it would be difficult to decide whether [the book] was more entertaining or useful.” The London Athenaeum was enchanted by the author, who “is obviously endowed with life’s best blessings—an observant eye, joined to a cheerful and thankful heart.” It recommended the book “for its spirit and truth.” The book was excerpted in several magazines and journals, and noted in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine as “written by a lady, who has set a stout heart to a steep hill,… and who by spirit, activity, and good humour, has surmounted her difficulties, or converted them into pleasantries.” It had immediately become required reading for any English gentlewoman considering emigration to British North America, and its sales helped to keep Mr. Charles Knight’s shaky publishing house afloat.

Yet the author received only 110 pounds for the copyright to the book, and no royalties on sales. Stuck in the remote depths of a colony, Catharine had little leverage on Charles Knight. The ingenuous optimism that saturates The Backwoods of Canada drained away, as the author realized that her bestseller was not going to rescue her from the woods.

By now, the sisters’ husbands were dismally discouraged. Both families were afflicted with malaria, which was rampant on the frontier, where settlers were struggling to drain mosquito-infested swamps. After a few days of sweating and shivers, most of the family members recovered fully. But the disease “threw a gloom” on Thomas’s spirits, according to Catharine, which he lacked the stamina to shake off. Both men had additional family responsibilities. The Moodies now had four children: Katie, Aggie, Dunbar, and Donald, who was born in May 1836. By 1837, Catharine was the mother of James, four; Katharine Agnes Strickland (Kate), one; and newborn Thomas Henry Strickland (Harry). There were a lot of