The Mrs. Mike Mystery

Growing up, one of my favorite books was "Mrs. Mike" by Nancy and Benedict Freedman. I read the Scholastic books copy until it fell apart, but still have a battered copy my parents gave me for Christmas one year. I ususally pick up my tattered copy about once every 18 months and re-read it. Yes, I still love the story as much now, as I did when I first read it over 40 years ago.

For those that have never read the book, it is the story of the early married life of Katherine Mary Flannigan, and her husband, Mike, a member of the Canadian Mounties. The Freedmans met Mrs. Flannigan, who was widowed in 1933, and were so taken with her story, that they turned it into a book. "Mrs. Mike" ended with the death of Mike and Kathy's two birth children and the adoption of three other children.

Nearly 50 years later, the Freedmans wrote two other books, "The Search for Joyful" and "Kathy Little Bird". One was about Kathy Forquet, the daughter of Oh-Be-Joyful and Jonathan Forquet, whom Mike and Kathy adopted. The other is about Kathy Forquet's daughter, also named Kathy. I haven't read either, but understand there is little mention of Kathy Flannigan in either book. Yes, I'll eventually read them, but have to mention that the reviews on Amazon are less-then-glowing for either.

For the last few years, I have been sporadically searching the internet, trying to find more information. There's a thread out on Geneaology.com, asking many of the same questions I have. Like me, no one can find anything anywhere. What of Kathy and her children? Did she & Mike have other children? Where are the descendents? It wasn't until I found the blurb on Wikipedia that I found out Kathy Flannigan had remarried!

Daggone it, there aren't many answers out there, just the info on Wikipedia, and Kathy's obituary, in the New York Times, exactly 145 words, and one has to pay to read it.

This year, I plan to give Jennifer a copy of "Mrs. Mike" on her birthday. I'm hoping she will love it as much as I do.

Here's what Wikipedia has:



Katherine Mary Flannigan (born Katherine Mary O'Fallon, c. 1890, Ireland died 1954) immigrated with her family to Boston, Massachusetts as a small child. At age 16, she travelled to Calgary, Alberta to visit family and recover from an illness. In 1907, she met and married Mike Flannigan, a sergeant with the Northwest Mounted Police, and moved with him to isolated posts in the mountain and lake regions (Lesser Slave Lake) of British Columbia and northern Alberta.

Her true story was the basis for the novel Mrs. Mike and the 1949 film of the same title.

After Sgt. Flannigan's death in 1933, Mrs. Flannigan left the North for a time and eventually related her story to Benedict and Nancy Freedman. Their novel drawn from her experiences, Mrs. Mike, was published in 1947 and became a critical and popular success.

Mrs. Flannigan then wrote The Faith of Mrs. Kelleen, which was set in 1880s Ireland and based on the story of her great-aunt. The January 1951 New York Times review by Orville Prescott stated, "Having lived a life of dramatic adventure (her honeymoon was a 700-mile jaunt by dog team in the Canadian north) and having seen others write a popular novel about it, Mrs. Flannigan has evidently decided that any other books about her relations might as well be written by herself."

Press sources report that in her later years, Mrs. Flannigan remarried (John P. Knox) and lived in Vancouver. She died on Aug. 8, 1954, while visiting family and friends in Calgary.