This is the third month that we have met online using Zoom. We discussed Linda's book choice, The Home for Unwanted Girls, by Canadian author Joanna Goodman. Present were Beth, Betty, Carla, Colette, Janet, Linda, Michèle and Shirley. We were also very fortunate to have the author Joanna Goodman join us for a good hour of our meeting.
Before discussing this month's book we revealed the "academy award" of the best book we read in 2019. Circumstances prevented us from awarding the lovely book bag that Shirley made and announcing the winner before this month. Linda's choice for 2019, Requiem, by Canadian author France Itani was our choice for Best Book.
The Home for Unwanted Girls is the story of a young girl, Maggie, the daughter of a French mother and an English father living in the Eastern Townships of Québec. It is the 1950's and when Maggie falls in love with a young poor French farmer and becomes pregnant, her parents send her to live with her aunt and uncle and force her to give up the baby. Maggie's father does not want his daughter to marry a poor French farmer; he has ambitions for her. Maggie's daughter, that she names Élodie, is sent to an orphanage with the hope that she will be adopted by a good family. In alternating chapters, we follow Maggie's life and Élodie's life. Élodie finds herself caught up in the horrid nightmare of the Duplessis Orphans in Québec and Maggie begins a new life with an English husband chosen by her father.
This is an historical novel that reveals in great detail the horrific life that illegitimate children had when, because of federal funding, the Premier of Québec Maurice Duplessis passed a law that allowed orphanages to certify the children as mentally ill and the orphanages to become mental institutions. Also highlighted in the background, is the uneasy side-by-side lives of the French and English that existed in Québec in that time period and, some say, still exists in modern Québec.
It is safe to say that all members of our Club loved this story. Most of us found the incidents of Élodie's life in the mental institution difficult to read. But because Ms. Goodman alternated between Maggie's life and the description of Élodie's horrifying life, as readers we had some relief. All our members thought the character development was excellent: we knew Maggie and Gabriel; we could feel the intensity of their love for each other. We understood Gabriel's anger and felt the pain of loss Maggie felt and the need she had to find her daughter. Both of Maggie's parents were vivid characters, the difficult relationship between the two well described as well as Maggie's relationship with each of her parents.
Ms. Goodman told us that originally she wanted to tell her own mother's story, of a young ambitious girl raised in a "mixed" family with a French Catholic mother who had come from a poor background and an English Protestant entrepreneur father. In the research she did about Québec and the precarious relationship between the French and English, she stumbled on the Duplessis Orphans story and she then knew that the story she would write would be about Maggie and Élodie.
The 20 years of research she did has allowed her to also write a sequel that will be out in Fall 2020, called The Forgotten Daughter. She tells the story of Élodie and of Véronique Fortin, a separatist who falls for the journalist, James Phénix, Maggie's son.
We wish to thank Joanna Goodman for participating in our Bookclub meeting. It was an excellent conversation with her that we enjoyed thoroughly. Thanks to Linda for suggesting this book!
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