Publishers Weekly
01/29/2024
French novelist Malye’s epic and nuanced U.S. debut portrays the travails of 90 women plucked from La Salpêtrière, a Parisian asylum, for an arduous voyage to Louisiana in 1720, where they will be matched with Frenchmen to help populate the colony. Among the passengers is Charlotte, an orphan whose only home has been the hospital; the savvy Geneviève, who was committed after she was caught providing abortions; and the largely silent Pétronille, whose wealthy family abandoned her for committing the indiscretion of carrying on an innocent friendship with the family gardener. In Louisiana, having survived scurvy and pirate attacks on the long voyage, Charlotte marries a boat guide, Geneviève a fur trapper, and Pétronille an exporter. The story stretches into the next decade as the women rely on their bonds with each other. After Charlotte is widowed, she moves into Geneviève’s house to work as a nanny for her children. Meanwhile, Pétronille again draws ire for an improper friendship, this time with a Natchez woman who tutors her in healing arts. Though Malye’s wide lens can sometimes make for an unfocused narrative, each of the three principal characters are richly drawn, and the author displays a formidable grasp on her historical setting. It adds up to a well-crafted story of women finding ways to survive against forbidding odds. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
An Elle "Best and Most Anticipated Fiction Book. So Far" —
"Pelican Girls is a marvelous achievement, an immersive and moving novel, as beautifully written as it is impeccably researched. I haven’t been this swept away by a piece of historical fiction since Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet." — Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions
"A tale of female friendship unlike any I’ve come across before, Julia Malye’s inspired-by-a-true-story Pelican Girls is as incredible a feat of research as it is a daring work of fiction." — Elle
"To enter Julia Malye’s work is to be completely transported. Every detail in your vision, touch of fabric against your skin, pulse of blood through your veins, is rendered so lush and evocative that reading this novel feels like absorbing a lifetime of experience. The rare page-turner that both entertains and enlightens, Pelican Girls is an undeniable achievement of research, storytelling, and human compassion. One of the best historical novels you will ever come across; this book is an absolute gift." — M.O. Walsh, NYT bestselling author of My Sunshine Away and The Big Door Prize
"Epic and nuanced. . . .The three principal characters are richly drawn, and the author displays a formidable grasp on her historical setting. It adds up to a well-crafted story of women finding ways to survive against forbidding odds." — Publishers Weekly
"Stunning, moving, and remarkable. Pelican Girls is more than a novel, it’s an act of advocacy for human rights and for historical acknowledgment. Julia Malye has found a rich and compelling voice, unique to those who are experts in navigating between languages and cultures.” — Nguyen Phan Que Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
"Pelican Girls is a feat of sublime imagination, every page a wonder. Malye has written an unforgettably rich and sensual novel—a triumph." — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen and The Dog of the North
“This book fascinates me. It’s moving in every way: a celebration of complicity and love among women and a summary of their difficult lives. It has everything in it: a great story, landscapes, atmosphere, depth and a finely wrought prose. It makes you feel that you are reading one of those literary classics that make you believe in contemporary fiction again—told with spark and excitement, and with the freshness only a young writer can give. ” — Pilar Quintana, two-time finalist of the National Book Award, author of The Bitch and Abyss
“This richly imagined historical saga tells the story of three women, discarded by French society, who have little choice but to make new lives in a country thousands of miles away, married to men they barely know. As their lives intertwine again and again, Malye paints a vivid portrait of displacement and resilience, even as she lays bare the compromises her heroines must make and the ways they become complicit in the inequities of empire.” — Anna North, Anna North, New York Times bestselling author of Outlawed
"Julia Malye's Pelican Girls is a richly layered, multi-character narrative of a long-overlooked period in history. More than that, however, it's an exploration of the varied—and often cruel—ways in which we experience both abandonment and agency. Haunting, heartbreaking, and harrowing, Malye's story is one of survival and perseverance; it is a look into the lives of women who've had everything taken from them but still manage to go on. " — Virginia Reeves, author of Work Like Any Other and The Behavior of Love
"Pelican Girls is the kind of book you lose yourself in. It blends the most engaging historical detail with a story so fresh and relatable it was impossible not to feel bound to these women as they journey into their brave new world. I am grateful to Malye for effortlessly introducing me to a piece of history I knew little of and a story which will linger long with me. A beautiful and heart-rending evocation of a haunted, and haunting, moment in history." — Jan Carson, award-winning author of The Raptures
Library Journal
02/01/2024
Early 18th-century men who settled in the French colony of La Louisiane, in the Americas, are desperate for wives from their home country, France. The Superioress of La Salpêtrière, a Parisian institution that serves as a women's hospital, prison, and orphanage, is instructed to provide a list to government authorities of fertile and obedient young women to send to Louisiana as potential brides. Pétronille, Geneviève, and Charlotte are among the 90 women who travel to the New World on the ship La Baleine. Pétronille is considered simple-minded by her wealthy family. Geneviève lost her family after their move from Provence to Paris. She was then accused of being a depraved woman by her employer, a marchioness. Abandoned at birth, orphaned Charlotte knows of no other existence. As these three women balance relationships amid disease, weather, war, death, and other facts of colonial life, they are bound together by their will to endure. French novelist and translator Malye's U.S. literary debut is a vivid and detailed historical account of the brutal and fierce conditions encountered by the Louisiana Territory colonists. VERDICT Fans of historical fiction will appreciate this atmospheric tale of survival, reminiscent of Savage Lands by Clare Clark.—Joy Gunn
Kirkus Reviews
2023-12-16
Malye describes the French colonization of 18th-century La Louisiane with exacting detail through the eyes of women ordered there by the French government to become wives.
In 1720, the Superioress of La Salpêtrière, a combination orphanage/reformatory/prison for wayward women, is ordered to choose 90 inmates to cross the sea to help bolster the struggling French American colony. She’s not sure whether she’s offering them a fresh start or a death sentence, given the weather, disease and warfare in La Louisiane. During the months-long voyage, three of the travelers form deep bonds. Twenty-two-year-old Geneviève Menu, who has fended for herself since her parents’ deaths when she was 11, is glad to avoid incarceration as an abortionist. Sensitive, eccentric Pétronille Béranger must leave the “golden cell” reserved for wealthy outcasts since her family has stopped paying her board. La Salpêtrière is the only home 12-year-old orphan Charlotte Couturier has known, but she begs to go after her only friend is chosen. Over the next 15 years in La Louisiane, Geneviève is widowed by three husbands, all named Pierre (this earnest novel’s one humorous note), while Pétronille maintains her tepid but comfortable marriage until forced to make a life-or-death choice for her children’s sake. Widowed at 19 and childless, Charlotte moves into a convent. Malye paints a detailed, obviously well-researched portrait of the socioeconomics, physical hardships, and treacherous natural beauty of La Louisiane as seen through these women’s eyes—and also, briefly, in a significant counterpoint, through the eyes of Utu’wv Ecoko’nesel, Pétronille’s unlikely Natchez friend and protector, who expresses her people’s abiding anger over the French belief that Natchez land “could be divided into parts and handed over.” Unfortunately, Utu’wv Ecoko’nesel is never made more than a noble symbol, while the French women become fully realized, individual admixtures of strengths and weaknesses. Inevitably, all find their greatest solace in female relationships, both platonic and sexual.
The women’s emotionally complex stories are more potent than the author’s ambitious, sometimes murky, take on history.
