This is one of those books I stumbled across without having heard of before finding it. It was sitting on a new in paperback table at my happy place and the title and cover photo made me stop and read the description. And like so many times before, I found a gem!!
The Home for Unwanted Girls is a heartbreaking yet heart-mending story about love. Love between parents and children, love between friends, love between lovers.
In 1950 Quebec Maggie, a young half English half French girl, finds herself in love with the young French boy form the farm next door. Her father is having none of it and sends her to live with an Aunt and Uncle until the boy returns to his winter job in the city. While there she discovers she is pregnant. Her parents give her no choice and make her give up her baby, who she names Elodie, and Maggie feels like at just newly 16 she has no choice. She breaks up with her love, Gabriel, and the baby is given up and Maggie is never the same.
Elodie doesn't get adopted and her story is told in alternating chapters with Maggie's. They come so close to finding each other but the system was not set up to allow mothers and their children to be reunited. When to bring in more money the orphanage is turned to a mental hospital Elodie and many other children are caught up in a nightmare.
The Home for Unwanted Girls explores the fallout from choices we make or allow others to make for us. It is also a story about strength and healing. Maggie is so hurt and angry by her parents and has to learn that they are people too and has to decide if she can forgive them. Elodie feels broken and helpless and unequipped for a life outside asylum walls.
This was a really good read. It moved me, made me cry, and made me happy.
(Finished July 3, 2018)
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