The Home for Unwanted Girls

In this gripping, thought-provoking book about love, secrets, and treachery, Philomena meets Orphan Train. It tells the tale of a young, single mother who is forced to part from her baby at birth and the extent she would go to in order to locate her.

Like Maggie Hughes' parents, French and English in 1950s Quebec tolerate one another with fragile tolerance. Maggie's father, who speaks English, does not want his daughter to marry the impoverished French lad who lives on the farm across from them. But Gabriel Phénix wins Maggie's affection. Her parents pressure her to put baby Elodie up for adoption and get her life "back on track" when she becomes pregnant at the age of fifteen.

Elodie grows up in the destitute system of orphanages in Quebec. Elodie's situation is already tenuous, but it takes a sad turn when she and hundreds of other orphans in Quebec are labelled mentally ill due to a new rule that gives psychiatric institutions more cash than orphanages. Elodie, who is intelligent and tenacious, endures abhorrent abuse at the hands of the nuns and, at seventeen, gains her freedom after being dropped into an unfamiliar and sometimes frightening environment.

Married to a businessman who is anxious to establish a family, Maggie can never forget the daughter she had to give up, and a chance reunion with Gabriel leads her to make a difficult decision. The storylines of Maggie and Elodie gradually converge but never really touch as time goes on, until Maggie comes to the realisation that she must follow her own path and look for her long-lost daughter in order to eventually uncover the truth that has been withheld from them both.