Farley and Claire
A Love Story
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
“Farley and Claire is a love story, a biography, a Tale of Two Farleys, or perhaps three: the public one, the private one, and the secret one.”—Margaret Atwood
The tumultuous, enduring love story between iconic writer Farley Mowat and his wife Claire, including excerpts from their passionate letters, published here for the first time.
When Farley Mowat met Claire Wheeler in August 1960, the attraction was immediate, and within days they were lovers, despite the fact that Farley was already married. Their affair—partly aided and abetted by publisher Jack McClelland—included an extended correspondence until several years later, when Farley finally obtained a Mexican divorce and the two were married in Texas. They were together until Farley’s death 54 years later.
Claire, a brilliant diarist, has given author Michael Harris complete access to her journals and letters, as well as Farley’s letters, and Harris has conducted extensive interviews with her and original research. The result is a literary love story for the ages, complete with photos of the couple who defied conventions of their time to be together.
Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this penetrating outing, journalist Harris (Party of One) recounts the passionate love affair between Farley Mowat, a Canadian naturalist and popular environmental author, and Claire Wheeler, his second wife. Harris traces the couple's relationship from their first meeting in 1960 through Mowat's death in 2014. Mowat, Harris notes, had been married, albeit unhappily, for 13 years when he introduced himself to Claire, whom he found sketching a schooner in the harbor where his sailboat was docked on Saint-Pierre Island, off the coast of Newfoundland. The pair struck up a romance, but Mowat couldn't get a divorce in Canada without the consent of his reluctant wife. In 1965, Mowat and Wheeler traveled to Mexico, where Mowat was granted a divorce (though Wheeler would continue to wonder about its legality), and he soon after married Wheeler in a Texas courthouse. Harris offers detailed portraits of both lovers, depicting Mowat as an adventurous romantic and Wheeler as a brilliant woman (she published several successful memoirs and novels starting in the 1980s) saddled with the burden of keeping secret her affair with a famous writer, and excerpts from newly unembargoed journals and letters provide intimate insight into their relationship (an explicit poem Mowat wrote for Wheeler divulges that they named each other's genitals Georgie and Georgiana). It's a revealing look inside a literary love affair.
