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This article is about the book called Home for Unwanted Girls. It was written last year, in 2018 by a Canadian author Joanna Goodman. This is one of the few books that really make you think, worry and cross your fingers for the characters. Especially, after you know this is all a true story... That is very intense. What is the story about, basically?
First of all, the setting takes place in Canada, Quebec in 1940s to 1970s. Recently, a few months ago I learnt in school that the Quebec French people wanted to move from Canada and create their own country and they almost succeeded in that. So these events really affected the lives of the main characters.
The main characters themselves are Maggie, Gabriel, Elodie and some others. Maggie is a half-French, half-English girl that lives in Quebec. She is 15 years old and she is crushing on a boy from the neighbourhood. Soon, she is pregnant. FROM HIM. I know, crazy. But that's the way it is. Of course, she can't keep the baby because in 1950s people cared about their reputation more than ever. Even more than they do now. So a little girl with a pretty name of Elodie went to the orphanage. Just to clarify, from then on the story is told from both Maggie's point of view and from Elodie's point of view and how she grew up. Life in the orphanage was actually fine until 1957. They actually let girls study and have fun and just enjoy normal activities. But in 1957, when Elodie was 7 years old, there was this thing called the Duplessis orphans. Basically, what happened is that more than 20'000 orphans were falsely certified as mentally ill and placed in asylums. This happened because of the money only - the church wanted to get money because the government gave them 2.75$ for a phsychiatric patient and only 1.25$ for orphans. So the church basically lied to the government. The author Joanna Goodman really did touch controversial topics like this and many others.
As you might have understood already, Elodie was one of the children who were falsely accused of being mentally ill though she was not. She was treated like one and was given some medications to calm her down. She was just a little kid, why? That is not nice at all. I mean, that is disgusting! Why would they do such a thing? Also, during her stay in the asylum, she was beaten up multiple times, which is no surprise and it was really just bad experience for her. During all those years the mother, Maggie, tried reaching out to her daughter. She constantly regretted not raising the daughter on her own. But still, she was quite lucky that the boy who was the dad of Elodie, a man now, Gabriel Phenix, actually loved her and they married each other. That rarely happens with guys. Just saying! Together, they have been searching for their daughter and it was quite hard because the nuns that ran the asylums didn’t want the parents to know about their kids. It was just not profitable for them. The system was really, really bad back then.
The good thing about this book is that you don't really notice how time passes and don't count pages down. It really is interesting and you don't get the feeling like: "Oh my god, just do that already! Why are you so slow?". You don't get annoyed with characters. The language also really describes the story and the characters. You can picture them easily and it is very easy to understand their feelings and actions. That is a really important part and probably, a lot of writers would do anything to hear these words from their readers. That really is an indicator of an interesting book.