Tavia Gilbert tells Emma’s story, reading from the journal of this fictional character and giving her a believable voice with a wide range of emotions. Shelly Wood places 17-year-old Emma, a midwife-in-training, at the northern Ontario farm of the Dionne family when the world was captivated by the birth of five identical baby girls. Emma has a young, eager voice full of excitement and pride in her role of caring for the girls. A tone of superiority and judgment infuses her voice as she observes the parents trying to regain a role in the girls’ lives. The girls have childlike voices, and the other characters also sound realistic. Excerpts from archival news stories that give historical context are read in an authoritative voice. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
The Quintland Sisters: A Novel
Narrated by Tavia Gilbert
Shelley WoodUnabridged — 11 hours, 24 minutes
The Quintland Sisters: A Novel
Narrated by Tavia Gilbert
Shelley WoodUnabridged — 11 hours, 24 minutes
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Overview
In Shelley Wood's fiction debut, listeners are taken inside the devastating true story of the Dionne Quintuplets, told from the perspective of one young woman who meets them at the moment of their birth.
Reluctant midwife Emma Trimpany is just 17 when she assists at the harrowing birth of the Dionne quintuplets: five tiny miracles born to French farmers in hardscrabble Northern Ontario in 1934. Emma cares for them through their perilous first days and when the government decides to remove the babies from their francophone parents, making them wards of the British king, Emma signs on as their nurse.
Over 6,000 daily visitors come to ogle the identical “Quints” playing in their custom-built playground; at the height of the Great Depression, the tourism and advertising dollars pour in. While the rest of the world delights in their sameness, Emma sees each girl as unique: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Émilie. With her quirky eye for detail, Emma records every strange twist of events in her private journals.
As the fight over custody and revenues turns increasingly explosive, Emma is torn between the fishbowl sanctuary of Quintland and the wider world, now teetering on the brink of war. Steeped in research, The Quintland Sisters*is a novel of love, heartache, resilience, and enduring sisterhood-a fictional, coming-of-age story bound up in one of the strangest true tales of the past century.
Editorial Reviews
01/28/2019
Wood’s intriguing debut is a fictionalized version of the real events surrounding the birth of the Dionne quintuplets in 1934 rural Canada. In Corbeil, Ontario, 17-year-old Emma Trimpany accompanies a midwife to a birth at the Dionne home, because Emma’s mother has decided that midwifery is a suitable profession for Emma. Emma assists with the birth of the five impossibly tiny girls, who are kept warm in an apple crate placed in front of a wood stove. Emma works with nurses and Dr. Allan Dafoe as they care for the young girls round the clock, trying to keep them as healthy as possible. Against all odds, the quintuplets—Marie, Cecile, Emilie, Yvonne, and Annette—continue to grow and thrive as the Canadian government steps in to provide financial assistance and eventually becomes a custodian of the quintuplets. Through Emma’s journal entries and newspaper clippings, the lives of the five young girls unfold as they reside in a hospital across the road from the farmhouse where they were born and become a major tourist attraction. Wood cleverly combines fact and fiction in a fast-paced novel that will leave readers contemplating how the best intentions of government intervention can have dire, unanticipated consequences. Agent: Transatlantic Literary Agency, Inc. (Mar.)
Wood cleverly combines fact and fiction in a fast-paced novel that will leave readers contemplating how the best intentions of government intervention can have dire, unanticipated consequences.” — Publishers Weekly
“...an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.” — Booklist
“The Quintland Sisters is an impeccably researched historical novel that will enthrall you. From the moment Shelley Wood introduced the remarkable Dionne quintuplets, I was utterly captivated...I could not get this story out of my head long after I finished reading it.” — Joanna Goodman, author of The Home for Unwanted Girls
“This gorgeously written novel about miracles, love and resilience is perfect for fans of Joanna Goodman.” — Marissa Stapley, bestselling author of Mating for Life and Things to Do When It’s Raining
“...a stunning novel...Meticulously researched and sensitively told, this book is a journey not to be missed.” — Heather Young, author of The Lost Girls
“...Wood deftly captures the fascinating collisions between faith and science, powerful and poor, and the tensions that arise when a rural town and its inhabitants are cast under the relentless scrutiny of the public’s obsession with one extraordinary family.” — Elise Hooper, author of The Other Alcott and Learning to See
“A charming and well-researched… tale of love and survival.” — Kirkus Reviews
“As only the best historical fiction can, The Quintland Sisters transports the reader to another time period and shines a light on an event that has an impact on its era and about which the actual details are little known.” — New York Journal of Books
“An engaging and thoughtful fictionalized account of the early lives of the Dionne quintuplets . . . Wood’s research is woven into the fabric of the story and her characters are well dimensioned and human.” — Yakima Herald
An engaging and thoughtful fictionalized account of the early lives of the Dionne quintuplets . . . Wood’s research is woven into the fabric of the story and her characters are well dimensioned and human.
“The Quintland Sisters is an impeccably researched historical novel that will enthrall you. From the moment Shelley Wood introduced the remarkable Dionne quintuplets, I was utterly captivated...I could not get this story out of my head long after I finished reading it.
...an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.
...Wood deftly captures the fascinating collisions between faith and science, powerful and poor, and the tensions that arise when a rural town and its inhabitants are cast under the relentless scrutiny of the public’s obsession with one extraordinary family.
This gorgeously written novel about miracles, love and resilience is perfect for fans of Joanna Goodman.
...a stunning novel...Meticulously researched and sensitively told, this book is a journey not to be missed.
As only the best historical fiction can, The Quintland Sisters transports the reader to another time period and shines a light on an event that has an impact on its era and about which the actual details are little known.
...an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.
Tavia Gilbert tells Emma’s story, reading from the journal of this fictional character and giving her a believable voice with a wide range of emotions. Shelly Wood places 17-year-old Emma, a midwife-in-training, at the northern Ontario farm of the Dionne family when the world was captivated by the birth of five identical baby girls. Emma has a young, eager voice full of excitement and pride in her role of caring for the girls. A tone of superiority and judgment infuses her voice as she observes the parents trying to regain a role in the girls’ lives. The girls have childlike voices, and the other characters also sound realistic. Excerpts from archival news stories that give historical context are read in an authoritative voice. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
2018-12-11
Summoned in May 1934, to help the local midwife deliver a child two months premature, Emma Trimpany, just 17 years old herself, witnesses the remarkable births of five tiny babes: the Dionne Quintuplets.
Wood's debut novel tells the story of the first recorded successful delivery of quintuplets, to Elzire and Oliva Dionne in rural Canada. Through journal entries, Emma chronicles the girls' lives from the frightening first days, when the tiny, fragile babies struggled to survive every hour, through their childhoods as well as Emma's own blossoming into a nurse and young woman. Already raising five children, the Dionnes live on a farm that Dr. Allan Dafoe pronounces unfit for the quints. Initially, Dafoe transforms the Dionne's kitchen into a sterile space with incubators shipped in from Chicago; eventually, a brand-new hospital is built, devoted exclusively to the quints and their medical team, across the street from the farmhouse. In addition to recording the girls' developmental progress, Emma traces the comings and goings of various nurses, some of whom leave under shadowy circumstances. Telling the tale through Emma's perspective enables Wood to capture not only the fiery conflict between the provincial, French-speaking Dionnes and the medical team (with its well-meaning but arrogant emphasis on cleanliness and what's best technically for the children), but also Emma's uncomfortable sympathies. The conflict escalates as Oliva Dionne and Dr. Dafoe lock horns in a series of lawsuits, with Dionne trying to assert parental rights and both sides (plus the Canadian government) trying to capitalize upon the quints' popularity through advertising and movie contracts. Meanwhile, as Emma herself must decide whether mothering the quints is worth giving up her dreams of art school, she is headed for a cataclysmic change of her own.
A charming and well-researched, if long-winded, tale of love and survival.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170097340 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 03/05/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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