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Traveling Friends Group Read

When I saw that beautiful, intriguing and haunting cover I knew I had to read this one.  Just looking at the cover brought on some emotion.  Not really knowing what the story was about it did take me a while to finally read it, but I have to say that it worked out well because when I did read this one the timing was perfect.  We read this one in our Traveling Friends ŷ������ Reading group.  This one made for a really great and interesting discussion amongst us.  So much to talk about with this story and we really appreciated being able to discuss this one together.

The Home for Unwanted Girls is a compelling and heartbreaking family saga that focuses on historical events and a scandal in a Canadian province of Quebec.  It's not something that I think is well known and Joanna Goodman who was inspired by her Mother digs into some history here with some hostilities between French and English speaking Canadians.

Along with the hostilities that divided French and English speaking Canadians,  Joanna Goodman brings to light a dark time in Quebec's past and one of the darkest scandals involving money and religion.  Through one of our main characters here with Elodie, we are shown the cruelty, abuse and conditions orphans lived in while under the care of nuns.  Goodman gives a voice to the victims of this scandal through Elodie, allowing us to feel so many emotions for them while reading this story.  It also allowed us to learn something we haven't heard of before.

We were immediately drawn into the complex and intriguing side of the family saga with Maggie and her family's story and decisions that were forced on her by her family, leaving us with so much to discuss.  We question their decisions and reasons and tried to understand the different sides we were shown.  At the final discussion, we used the questions provided by the publisher and that really gave us so much to think about and discuss really enhancing our discussion.

We highly recommend this story to everyone who loves historical fiction based on real events.  We also highly recommend to reading groups as there is just so much to discuss with this one.   We do want to offer a caution here because of the abuse and there are some upsetting conditions to this story.