The Home for Unwanted Girls
Publisher
HarperCollins
Publication Year
2018
ISBN
9780062834089
Pages
384 pages
Genre
historical
Format
novel
Item Type
Fiction
Annotation
In 1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious civility--much like Maggie Hughes' parents. Maggie's English-speaking father has ambitions for his daughter that don't include marriage to the poor French boy the next farm over. But Maggie's heart is captured by Gabriel Phénix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents send the baby Elodie to an orphanage where she receives horrible treatment. Seventeen years later, Maggie, married to a businessman eager to start a family, cannot forget the daughter she was forced to abandon, and a chance reconnection with Gabriel spurs a wrenching choice. As time passes, the stories of Maggie and Elodie intertwine but never touch, until Maggie realizes she must take what she wants from life and go in search of her long-lost daughter, finally reclaiming the truth that has been denied them both.
Grade Level
9-12; Adult
Diversity Topics
Family Relationships; Culture/Ethnicity; Parental rights termination; Biethnic; losing parental rights; losing your child; losing your daughter; biethnic teenager
Main Character
female child; female teenager; adult female
Race/Ethnicities
White (Canadian; French)
Family Formation
mother and father; orphan
Keywords
orphanage; teenage pregnancy; government funding; search; Quebec; nuns; religion; mental institution; money
Diversity Impact
direct
STARS Citation
Goodman, Joanna, "The Home for Unwanted Girls" (2018). Diverse Families. 1915.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/1915