An Elle "Best and Most Anticipated Fiction Book. So Far" —
"Pelican Girls is a marvelous achievement, an immersive and moving novel, as beautifully written as it is impeccably researched. I haven’t been this swept away by a piece of historical fiction since Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet." — Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions
"A tale of female friendship unlike any I’ve come across before, Julia Malye’s inspired-by-a-true-story Pelican Girls is as incredible a feat of research as it is a daring work of fiction." — Elle
"To enter Julia Malye’s work is to be completely transported. Every detail in your vision, touch of fabric against your skin, pulse of blood through your veins, is rendered so lush and evocative that reading this novel feels like absorbing a lifetime of experience. The rare page-turner that both entertains and enlightens, Pelican Girls is an undeniable achievement of research, storytelling, and human compassion. One of the best historical novels you will ever come across; this book is an absolute gift." — M.O. Walsh, NYT bestselling author of My Sunshine Away and The Big Door Prize
"Epic and nuanced. . . .The three principal characters are richly drawn, and the author displays a formidable grasp on her historical setting. It adds up to a well-crafted story of women finding ways to survive against forbidding odds." — Publishers Weekly
"Stunning, moving, and remarkable. Pelican Girls is more than a novel, it’s an act of advocacy for human rights and for historical acknowledgment. Julia Malye has found a rich and compelling voice, unique to those who are experts in navigating between languages and cultures.” — Nguyen Phan Que Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
"Pelican Girls is a feat of sublime imagination, every page a wonder. Malye has written an unforgettably rich and sensual novel—a triumph." — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen and The Dog of the North
“This book fascinates me. It’s moving in every way: a celebration of complicity and love among women and a summary of their difficult lives. It has everything in it: a great story, landscapes, atmosphere, depth and a finely wrought prose. It makes you feel that you are reading one of those literary classics that make you believe in contemporary fiction again—told with spark and excitement, and with the freshness only a young writer can give. ” — Pilar Quintana, two-time finalist of the National Book Award, author of The Bitch and Abyss
“This richly imagined historical saga tells the story of three women, discarded by French society, who have little choice but to make new lives in a country thousands of miles away, married to men they barely know. As their lives intertwine again and again, Malye paints a vivid portrait of displacement and resilience, even as she lays bare the compromises her heroines must make and the ways they become complicit in the inequities of empire.” — Anna North, Anna North, New York Times bestselling author of Outlawed
"Julia Malye's Pelican Girls is a richly layered, multi-character narrative of a long-overlooked period in history. More than that, however, it's an exploration of the varied—and often cruel—ways in which we experience both abandonment and agency. Haunting, heartbreaking, and harrowing, Malye's story is one of survival and perseverance; it is a look into the lives of women who've had everything taken from them but still manage to go on. " — Virginia Reeves, author of Work Like Any Other and The Behavior of Love
"Pelican Girls is the kind of book you lose yourself in. It blends the most engaging historical detail with a story so fresh and relatable it was impossible not to feel bound to these women as they journey into their brave new world. I am grateful to Malye for effortlessly introducing me to a piece of history I knew little of and a story which will linger long with me. A beautiful and heart-rending evocation of a haunted, and haunting, moment in history." — Jan Carson, award-winning author of The Raptures
2023-12-16
Malye describes the French colonization of 18th-century La Louisiane with exacting detail through the eyes of women ordered there by the French government to become wives.
In 1720, the Superioress of La Salpêtrière, a combination orphanage/reformatory/prison for wayward women, is ordered to choose 90 inmates to cross the sea to help bolster the struggling French American colony. She’s not sure whether she’s offering them a fresh start or a death sentence, given the weather, disease and warfare in La Louisiane. During the months-long voyage, three of the travelers form deep bonds. Twenty-two-year-old Geneviève Menu, who has fended for herself since her parents’ deaths when she was 11, is glad to avoid incarceration as an abortionist. Sensitive, eccentric Pétronille Béranger must leave the “golden cell” reserved for wealthy outcasts since her family has stopped paying her board. La Salpêtrière is the only home 12-year-old orphan Charlotte Couturier has known, but she begs to go after her only friend is chosen. Over the next 15 years in La Louisiane, Geneviève is widowed by three husbands, all named Pierre (this earnest novel’s one humorous note), while Pétronille maintains her tepid but comfortable marriage until forced to make a life-or-death choice for her children’s sake. Widowed at 19 and childless, Charlotte moves into a convent. Malye paints a detailed, obviously well-researched portrait of the socioeconomics, physical hardships, and treacherous natural beauty of La Louisiane as seen through these women’s eyes—and also, briefly, in a significant counterpoint, through the eyes of Utu’wv Ecoko’nesel, Pétronille’s unlikely Natchez friend and protector, who expresses her people’s abiding anger over the French belief that Natchez land “could be divided into parts and handed over.” Unfortunately, Utu’wv Ecoko’nesel is never made more than a noble symbol, while the French women become fully realized, individual admixtures of strengths and weaknesses. Inevitably, all find their greatest solace in female relationships, both platonic and sexual.
The women’s emotionally complex stories are more potent than the author’s ambitious, sometimes murky, take on history.
