Why does young, reform-minded lawyer George-Étienne Cartier join an armed uprising only to later reject violence as a means to achieve responsible government for Canada? In 1837, Lower Canada seethes with discontent. After savage rioting in Montreal between hardline loyalists and dissident radicals, there is no turning back. Cartier, a future Father of Confederation, commits himself to rebellion against the British Crown. Inspired by three of Cartier's recently discovered letters, The '37 deftly weaves fact with fiction. It imagines how an affair with a beautiful and witty schoolteacher, Dorothy Russell, changes his life-and helps ensure the birth of an independent Canada. From the battlefields of Lower Canada to languid trysts on an isolated farmstead, from the ambiguities of exile in the United States to the wretched clarity of executions in Montreal, from withered farm fields to hints of a new industrial age, the novel paints a picture of a country in the grip of rapid, unrelenting change.