Pelican girls : a novel / Julia Malye.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A sweeping epic in the vein of Philipp Meyer's The Son and Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and inspired by a true story, this stunning US literary debut captures the never-before-told journey of the Baleine Brides: a ship full of young women plucked from a Paris asylum and sent to marry settlers in North America's rough Louisiana Territory.

Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France's colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a hundred female "volunteers" of childbearing age--orphans, prisoners, and mental patients--to be shipped to New Orleans.

Among this group are three unlikely friends: a sharp-tongued twelve-year old orphan, a mute 'madwoman,' and an accused abortionist. Charlotte, Pétronille, and Geneviève, along with the dozens of other women aboard La Baleine, have no knowledge of what lies ahead and no control over their futures. Strangers brought together by fate, these brave and fierce young women will face extraordinary adversity--pirates, slavedrivers, sickness, war--but also the private trauma of heartbreak and unrequited love, children born and lost, cruelty and unexpected pleasure, and a friendship forged in fire that will sustain through the years.

At once a gorgeously written work of startling depth and emotion and a gripping drama marrying high-seas adventure with pioneer grit, Pelican Girls is a powerful, thought-provoking novel about female friendship and desire and the daunting compromises women are forced to make to survive.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

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

Publishers Weekly Review

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.)

Booklist Review

Genevieve, Charlotte, and Petronille are three of 90 young women sent from France to help populate the colony of La Louisiane. The plantations in New Biloxi require exhausting physical and mental labor to produce orchards or silkworms or children for the new region. In her English-language debut, French-born and Oregon-based author Malye illuminates a murky chapter of eighteenth-century history via these young women on a perilous journey to swampy shores. The girls stay in contact, supporting one another through difficult pregnancies, often cruel husbands, and an unforgiving landscape. Forced to endure, they find small moments of joy wherever they can: a horseback ride, a treasured recipe, a new connection with an unlikely neighbor. Malye's commitment to ensuring the women's stories are grounded in research and authenticity is immediately apparent; she describes the physical discomfort of a cross-Atlantic voyage, the pain of childbirth, the loneliness of resettlement, and the emotional distance from an abusive husband with a clear-eyed, compassionate voice. Fans of Lucinda Riley, Paulette Jiles, and Geraldine Brooks will savor this sweeping and powerful novel.

Kirkus Book Review

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.