Pelican Girls

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.