The Home for Unwanted Girls: The heart-wrenching, gripping story of a mother-daughter bond that could not be broken - inspired by true events

by Joanna Goodman Narrated by Saskia Maarleveld

Overview

Philomena meets The Orphan Train in this suspenseful, provocative novel filled with love, secrets, and deceit-the story of a young unwed mother who is forcibly separated from her daughter at birth and the lengths to which they go to find each other.

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 on the next farm over. But Maggie's heart is captured by Gabriel Phénix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents force her to give baby Elodie up for adoption and get her life `back on track'.

Elodie is raised in Quebec's impoverished orphanage system. It's a precarious enough existence that takes a tragic turn when Elodie, along with thousands of other orphans in Quebec, is declared mentally ill as the result of a new law that provides more funding to psychiatric hospitals than to orphanages. Bright and determined, Elodie withstands abysmal treatment at the nuns' hands, finally earning her freedom at seventeen, when she is thrust into an alien, often unnerving world.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/26/2018
Goodman (The Finishing School) immerses readers in post-WWII Quebec, where hostilities divide French- and English-speakers, in this moving if at times predictable coming-of-age novel. The daughter of a once-impoverished French woman and a middle-class English-speaking father, 15-year-old Maggie Hughes chooses to be English. Despite her father’s warnings that French boys are poor, “don’t finish school,” and have rotten teeth by 40, Maggie falls in love with Gabriel Phénix, the humble French boy living in a crammed shack on the cornfield bordering her family’s property. Their brief summer romance comes to an end when Maggie discovers she’s pregnant and her parents give her two options—give her baby to an orphanage or live in poverty with Gabriel. Fear of being disowned by her family leads Maggie to give up her daughter, Elodie. As the years pass, Maggie’s decision never ceases to haunt her, especially when she discovers that orphanages are being converted into mental institutions. While the third-person perspective works well for Maggie’s character, it comes off as unrealistic and forced in chapters about the younger Elodie (“She’s old enough and clever enough to understand that life as she knew it is over”). Still, Goodman writes with passion about a dark episode in Quebec’s recent past. Agent: Beverly Slopen, Beverly Slopen Literary (Canada). (Apr.)

From the Publisher

A study of how love persists through the most trying of circumstances. Deep and meaningful, this novel captures the reader’s attention until they’re rewarded with a happy ending.” — Booklist

“Moving.” — Publishers Weekly

 “The ending hits a perfect emotional note: bittersweet and honest, comforting and regretful.” — Kirkus

Praise for The Finishing School: “Suspenseful…. If your guilty-pleasure reads include elite boarding schools, secret societies, murder, and scandal, this one’s for you.” — Kirkus

“The Finishing School pulls back the curtain to expose a fascinating world of desire, betrayal, and dangerous secrets.” — Lou Berney, Edgar Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone

“The Finishing School plunges the reader headfirst into a fast-paced, nail-biting mystery that also manages to explore friendship, love, adolescence, family and motherhood. By the time you reach the unexpected ending, you’ll practically be gasping for air.” — Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Trouble with Lexie

Jessica Anya Blau

The Finishing School plunges the reader headfirst into a fast-paced, nail-biting mystery that also manages to explore friendship, love, adolescence, family and motherhood. By the time you reach the unexpected ending, you’ll practically be gasping for air.

Lou Berney

The Finishing School pulls back the curtain to expose a fascinating world of desire, betrayal, and dangerous secrets.

Booklist

A study of how love persists through the most trying of circumstances. Deep and meaningful, this novel captures the reader’s attention until they’re rewarded with a happy ending.

Booklist

A study of how love persists through the most trying of circumstances. Deep and meaningful, this novel captures the reader’s attention until they’re rewarded with a happy ending.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170355068
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/17/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,191,732

Videos