02495cam a2200385 i 4500 1165891815 TxAuBib 20240307120000.0 240307s2024||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9780063299757 30.00 0063299755 30.00 TxAuBib rda Malye, Julia. Pelican Girls [Book] : A Novel. New York : Harper, 2024. 354 pages ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier 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. 20240307. Deportees Louisiana New Orleans Fiction. Deportees France Fiction. Deportees Fiction. Brides Fiction. Ocean travel Fiction. Female friendship Fiction. Friendship Fiction. New Orleans (La) History 18th century Fiction. New Orleans (La) Fiction. Women Louisiana New Orleans Fiction. Historical fiction. Novels. Psychological fiction.