Pelican girls were women sent from France to the La Louisiane colony to become wives for the settlers. Julia Malye is a French author, but she wrote Pelican Girls in English.
In 1720, the abbess of the La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris is choosing women to dispatch across the Atlantic. Étiennette is about sixteen, the younger sister of a conspiracy theorist the abbess sent to Mississippi a year ago. Not yet rotten. A good choice for the colony. Charlotte is only twelve, and has been the abbess’ favourite since she was a baby. The abbess wants to keep her safe in the hospital but she insists on going with Étiennette. Pétronille has been confined in the hospital by her family, who claim she is mad. Geneviève, it is written in small print at the end of her file, is an abortionist. The hospital holds the abandoned, the insane and the criminal. The perfect pool for populating a new world.
There is danger ahead: danger from pirates, from disease, from illicit love, from penury, from men, from childbirth, and even from attack by Natchez villagers. It’s a harsh world and the women have no choice but to survive in any way they can. Sometimes it’s through acting in unexpected ways, sometimes through help from unexpected quarters, sometimes through sheer good luck. Malye relates these events in a matter-of-fact way. Heroics are without drama. And after the life-threatening moments the trauma lingers. These are not twenty-first century women in costume. women with super powers. They are not women pretending to be men. Their courage is the everyday female courage of their time. Their nightmares are eighteenth century nightmares.
‘Fourteen months have passed since the Natchez attack, but the events of that winter morning remain as vivid to Pétronille as if they happened yesterday. After Utu’Ecoko’nesel left, she collapsed. She was alone with her children on the shore of the St. Louis River, almost one hundred leagues away from the capital; on the other side of the woods, battles were raging.’
‘The grandchildren are told about girls barely older than them, who left their city never to return. The women describe the people they learned to love, a husband or a neighbor, and those who departed, making them feel that they would now have to start all over again; they talk about the men and women they betrayed, failed, or hurt; the compassion and the cruelty they were capable of, the destruction they caused; but, no matter what they think once they fall silent, the list is never complete.’
In her author notes Julia Malye writes,’ I have attempted to stay true to what is known about the period and these women’s collective story.’ I have heard it said that you shouldn’t expect to learn about history from historical fiction , and that is true of a lot of historical fiction but not of this book. If you want an insight into the early years of French colonial America Pelican Girls is a great place to start
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