A heart-wrenching mother-daughter story

In 1950s Quebec, Maggie’s English-speaking father’s ambitions for his daughter don’t include marriage to Gabriel, a poor French boy. When she becomes pregnant at 15, her parents force her to give baby Elodie up for adoption.

Elodie’s precarious existence takes a tragic turn when she and thousands of other orphans in Quebec are declared mentally ill, as a new law provides more funding to psychiatric hospitals than to orphanages. Elodie withstands abysmal treatment until, at 17, she is thrust into an alien, unnerving world.

Maggie, now married to a businessman, realizes she must search for her long-lost daughter, and reclaim the truth that has been denied them, in this suspenseful, provocative novel filled with love, secrets, and deceit.

Review Quote

“A study of how love persists through the most trying of circumstances. Deep and meaningful.”—Booklist

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