The Home for Unwanted Girls

Set in mid-twentieth-century Quebec, where French and English communities coexist in uneasy tension, the novel follows Maggie Hughes and her daughter Elodie across three decades of separation and search. Inspired by the real history of the Duplessis orphans, thousands of Quebec children falsely declared mentally ill so the Catholic Church and provincial government could collect higher payments for psychiatric patients than for orphans, the story traces how institutional cruelty and family shame keep a mother and daughter apart.

In 1948, 14-year-old Maggie works weekends at her father Wellington Hughes's bilingual seed store, Superior Seeds, in the Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal. Wellington is a proud English-speaking businessman married to Hortense, a French Canadian from the Montreal slums. Their household is defined by cultural conflict: Hortense insists on French at home, while Wellington sends the children to English school and warns Maggie against dating French boys. When Gabriel Phénix, the teenage brother of their impoverished neighbor Clémentine, returns from factory work in Montreal, Maggie is immediately drawn to him. She also catches Wellington in a sexual encounter with Clémentine, though both agree never to mention it.

By the following spring, Maggie and Gabriel begin dating secretly and have sex for the first time that summer. After Gabriel pulls a knife during a street fight with English boys, Wellington forbids Maggie from seeing him and sends her to Uncle Yvon and Aunt Deda's dairy farm in Frelighsburg. One night after a party, Yvon gets Maggie drunk and rapes her. When her parents visit in August, Hortense recognizes the signs of pregnancy. Maggie confesses to having sex with Gabriel but also reveals Yvon's assault, meaning the baby might not be Gabriel's. Hortense refuses to believe the accusation and orders Maggie never to speak of it. Wellington threatens to disown Maggie if she sees Gabriel again. Choosing between Gabriel and her father's world, including the seed store she dreams of running, Maggie stays and sends word through her sister Violet that she and Gabriel are finished.

In March 1950, Maggie delivers a girl she names Elodie, after a type of lily. The baby has jaundice and is taken away before Maggie can hold her. Wellington had arranged with a lawyer named Sonny Goldbaum to sell the baby to a couple from New York, but the couple refuses the sickly newborn. Elodie is left at the hospital and eventually transferred to the Saint-Sulpice Orphanage near Farnham.

The narrative shifts to Elodie at age four, living at Saint-Sulpice under the care of a kind nun she calls Sister Tata. Elodie is bright but thin, which discourages prospective adoptive parents. In 1955, the nuns announce "Change of Vocation Day": The orphanage is now a mental hospital, and every child is officially declared mentally deficient. School ends, bars go up on the windows, and elderly psychiatric patients are bused in. In 1957, Elodie is transferred to Saint-Nazarius Hospital in Montreal, a locked psychiatric institution. When an orphan named Emmeline protests that the children do not belong there, the ward supervisor, Sister Ignatia, strikes her and banishes her to the epileptic ward. Emmeline later dies from an overdose of Largactil, a tranquilizer, after receiving a lobotomy.

Meanwhile, Maggie moves to Montreal, learns Gabriel has married, and marries Roland Larsson, a banker. She has three miscarriages, which she interprets as punishment for giving Elodie away. In 1959, she calls the foundling home in Cowansville and learns no baby arrived there in March 1950, deepening her suspicion that Wellington lied about Elodie's placement.

At Saint-Nazarius, Elodie endures years of abuse: drugged nightly, forced to sew sheets and clean bathrooms, and locked in a straitjacket for a week after reporting conditions to a doctor. An orderly attempts to sexually assault her. A compassionate young nun, Sister Camille, becomes her ally, teaching her to read again.

Maggie reconnects with Gabriel in the Dunham cornfield in 1959. Despite both being married, their old feelings resurface, and they begin meeting in Montreal. Maggie tells Roland she wants to end their marriage. Before she can tell Gabriel about Elodie, her old friend Audrey McCauley, assuming Gabriel already knows, reveals the secret. Gabriel is devastated that Maggie kept the pregnancy from him. Maggie tells him about Yvon's assault, but Gabriel cannot forgive her silence. He ends the relationship and vanishes.

Maggie discovers she is pregnant from her encounter with Gabriel. Unable to find him, she investigates Goldbaum, who reveals Wellington hired him to arrange a black-market adoption. Wellington admits the truth: He tried to sell Elodie, but the buyers rejected her, and the baby ended up at Saint-Sulpice. Maggie gives birth to a son she names James Gabriel.

Wellington is diagnosed with terminal cancer from pesticide exposure. On his deathbed, he apologizes and reveals he named the baby Elodie as Maggie wished. He makes Maggie executor of his will, giving her control of Superior Seeds. After his death, Maggie finds a key he left and opens his filing cabinet, discovering Elodie's baby blanket and letters from a nun at Saint-Sulpice, including a photograph of a healthy three-year-old Elodie. Wellington had visited the orphanage posing as a prospective parent but arrived too late to retrieve her after the institution's conversion.

Gabriel returns after a year of cod fishing in the Gaspé Peninsula and meets his son. Together, Maggie and Gabriel visit Saint-Nazarius, where Sister Ignatia tells them Elodie died shortly after her transfer. Maggie does not believe her, noting the absence of a death certificate. After their visit, Sister Ignatia tells 11-year-old Elodie that her mother is dead, showing her a falsified file and destroying the girl's hope of reunification.

Gabriel sells his land and moves back to the Townships. He takes over the Phénix farm while Maggie runs Superior Seeds, and they have a daughter. Years later, Yvon dies by suicide after being exposed as a serial rapist; Hortense finally apologizes to Maggie for not believing her. In 1967, 17-year-old Elodie is released from Saint-Nazarius, terrified and unprepared for the outside world. Sister Camille arranges housing for her, and Elodie finds work as a waitress. In 1970, she meets Dennis, a young American soldier about to deploy to Vietnam, and they share a brief weekend together. Months later, she discovers she is pregnant. Elodie initially feels no connection to the baby but is encouraged by her roommate Marie-Claude to visit the nursery and name her daughter. She calls her Nancy and raises her alone, determined to give her the love she never received.

In 1974, Elodie tells her story to a journalist, but the published article sanitizes her experience. The journalist, however, notices a recurring classified ad matching Elodie's details and tells her about it. The ad lists a phone number and promises information about her birth family. Elodie calls.

Maggie answers. Overwhelmed, she tells Elodie she is her aunt, not yet ready to reveal the full truth. She later learns that Wellington started running the ad years before his death and made Maggie's brother Peter promise to continue it. When Elodie visits the following weekend, Maggie tells her the truth: She is Elodie's mother, and Gabriel is her father. Elodie is stunned but not bitter, understanding that Maggie was only 15 and powerless. She goes downstairs and greets Gabriel as "Papa."

That night, Maggie finds Elodie crying in the guest room and lies beside her. Elodie asks Maggie to write the true story of Saint-Nazarius, using Sister Ignatia's real name, so it can be published while the nun is still alive. Maggie agrees and suggests that Elodie and Nancy move to the country to live with the family. As Maggie recites her father's favorite poem to lull Elodie to sleep, Elodie closes her eyes and feels, for the first time, something unfamiliar alongside her enduring sadness: hope.