Unlike most missionary scholarship that focuses on male missionaries, "Good Intentions Gone Awry" chronicles the experience of a missionary wife. It is based on the letters that Emma Crosby, wife of the well-known Methodist missionary Thomas Crosby, wrote to her family and others in Cobourg, Ontario, while she lived at Fort Simpson, near present-day Prince Rupert. Crosby's letters to her mother are at the heart of this volume. Her correspondence begins just prior to her meeting the missionary suitor who would become her husband. The exchange of letters continued from 1874 until 1881, when her mother passed away. The deaths of her mother and then of her father five years later slowed her letters to her family to a trickle. "Good Intentions Gone Awry" is a fascinating collection. Crosby, besides being a prolific letter-writer, was well-educated and an informative writer. Her letters shed light on a particular era and bear witness to the contribution of missionary wives. They show that mission work was something much more complex than simple tales of conversion by men invested in Christianity. Multiple participants shaped the missionary enterprise, each of them acting on their own motivations with consequences that no one would have anticipated. This book is a valuable contribution to Canadian history and will appeal to readers in women's, Canadian, Native, and religious studies, as well as those interested in missiology in the Canadian West.