Mable Riley is a lovely addition to the recent, instantly rich tradition of Canadian historical fiction for girls. Although not a series like Scholastic’s Dear Canada or Penguin’s Our Canadian Girl, Marthe Jocelyn’s fifth novel shares their engaging diary format and calibre of writing.

In August 1901, 14-year-old Mable follows her bossy sister to Stratford, Ontario, where Viola has secured a job as a teacher. They board at the prosperous Goodhand farm. Although Mable assists Viola in the one-room schoolhouse, she quickly concludes that life in Stratford is as tedious as the one she left behind on the family farm. She is further disheartened by the general view that ladies with opinions are best shunned. All that changes when Mable befriends a glamorous, dangerously eccentric young widow, Mrs. Rattle. Soon Mable is drawn into the suffragist movement, protests over women’s work conditions, and even jail. Far from dying of boredom, our heroine is in over her head.

Eager to take on life, Mable enters Stratford with all the unconscious invincibility of a child who has always experienced popularity. Her burgeoning friendships are believably realized. The authoritarian Goodhands, Mrs. Forrest (the town’s moral viper), and the unpredictable Mrs. Rattle are nuanced characters. We know these people, they’ve been to our house.

Rather than struggling within a diarist’s constraints (i.e., short declarative sentences), Jocelyn seamlessly slides into the first-person narration of a conventional novel. Additional devices like letters from family and friends, Mr. Goodhand regaling the family with snippets from the local paper, and scenes from the overheated purple prose in Mable’s novel-in-progress add texture and depth. Jocelyn, who lives in New York and Stratford, is a quietly confident storyteller. After situating us in the first few pages with noticeably arcane phrases, the writing gets out of the way of Mable’s adventures. Mabel isn’t searching for her voice; one suspects she has always had one. What we witness is its growth in courage and timbre.