01/28/2019
Wood’s intriguing debut is a fictionalized version of the real events surrounding the birth of the Dionne quintuplets in 1934 rural Canada. In Corbeil, Ontario, 17-year-old Emma Trimpany accompanies a midwife to a birth at the Dionne home, because Emma’s mother has decided that midwifery is a suitable profession for Emma. Emma assists with the birth of the five impossibly tiny girls, who are kept warm in an apple crate placed in front of a wood stove. Emma works with nurses and Dr. Allan Dafoe as they care for the young girls round the clock, trying to keep them as healthy as possible. Against all odds, the quintuplets—Marie, Cecile, Emilie, Yvonne, and Annette—continue to grow and thrive as the Canadian government steps in to provide financial assistance and eventually becomes a custodian of the quintuplets. Through Emma’s journal entries and newspaper clippings, the lives of the five young girls unfold as they reside in a hospital across the road from the farmhouse where they were born and become a major tourist attraction. Wood cleverly combines fact and fiction in a fast-paced novel that will leave readers contemplating how the best intentions of government intervention can have dire, unanticipated consequences. Agent: Transatlantic Literary Agency, Inc. (Mar.)
Wood cleverly combines fact and fiction in a fast-paced novel that will leave readers contemplating how the best intentions of government intervention can have dire, unanticipated consequences.” — Publishers Weekly
“...an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.” — Booklist
“The Quintland Sisters is an impeccably researched historical novel that will enthrall you. From the moment Shelley Wood introduced the remarkable Dionne quintuplets, I was utterly captivated...I could not get this story out of my head long after I finished reading it.” — Joanna Goodman, author of The Home for Unwanted Girls
“This gorgeously written novel about miracles, love and resilience is perfect for fans of Joanna Goodman.” — Marissa Stapley, bestselling author of Mating for Life and Things to Do When It’s Raining
“...a stunning novel...Meticulously researched and sensitively told, this book is a journey not to be missed.” — Heather Young, author of The Lost Girls
“...Wood deftly captures the fascinating collisions between faith and science, powerful and poor, and the tensions that arise when a rural town and its inhabitants are cast under the relentless scrutiny of the public’s obsession with one extraordinary family.” — Elise Hooper, author of The Other Alcott and Learning to See
“A charming and well-researched… tale of love and survival.” — Kirkus Reviews
“As only the best historical fiction can, The Quintland Sisters transports the reader to another time period and shines a light on an event that has an impact on its era and about which the actual details are little known.” — New York Journal of Books
“An engaging and thoughtful fictionalized account of the early lives of the Dionne quintuplets . . . Wood’s research is woven into the fabric of the story and her characters are well dimensioned and human.” — Yakima Herald
An engaging and thoughtful fictionalized account of the early lives of the Dionne quintuplets . . . Wood’s research is woven into the fabric of the story and her characters are well dimensioned and human.
“The Quintland Sisters is an impeccably researched historical novel that will enthrall you. From the moment Shelley Wood introduced the remarkable Dionne quintuplets, I was utterly captivated...I could not get this story out of my head long after I finished reading it.
...an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.
...Wood deftly captures the fascinating collisions between faith and science, powerful and poor, and the tensions that arise when a rural town and its inhabitants are cast under the relentless scrutiny of the public’s obsession with one extraordinary family.
This gorgeously written novel about miracles, love and resilience is perfect for fans of Joanna Goodman.
...a stunning novel...Meticulously researched and sensitively told, this book is a journey not to be missed.
As only the best historical fiction can, The Quintland Sisters transports the reader to another time period and shines a light on an event that has an impact on its era and about which the actual details are little known.
New York Journal of Books
...an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.
2018-12-11
Summoned in May 1934, to help the local midwife deliver a child two months premature, Emma Trimpany, just 17 years old herself, witnesses the remarkable births of five tiny babes: the Dionne Quintuplets.
Wood's debut novel tells the story of the first recorded successful delivery of quintuplets, to Elzire and Oliva Dionne in rural Canada. Through journal entries, Emma chronicles the girls' lives from the frightening first days, when the tiny, fragile babies struggled to survive every hour, through their childhoods as well as Emma's own blossoming into a nurse and young woman. Already raising five children, the Dionnes live on a farm that Dr. Allan Dafoe pronounces unfit for the quints. Initially, Dafoe transforms the Dionne's kitchen into a sterile space with incubators shipped in from Chicago; eventually, a brand-new hospital is built, devoted exclusively to the quints and their medical team, across the street from the farmhouse. In addition to recording the girls' developmental progress, Emma traces the comings and goings of various nurses, some of whom leave under shadowy circumstances. Telling the tale through Emma's perspective enables Wood to capture not only the fiery conflict between the provincial, French-speaking Dionnes and the medical team (with its well-meaning but arrogant emphasis on cleanliness and what's best technically for the children), but also Emma's uncomfortable sympathies. The conflict escalates as Oliva Dionne and Dr. Dafoe lock horns in a series of lawsuits, with Dionne trying to assert parental rights and both sides (plus the Canadian government) trying to capitalize upon the quints' popularity through advertising and movie contracts. Meanwhile, as Emma herself must decide whether mothering the quints is worth giving up her dreams of art school, she is headed for a cataclysmic change of her own.
A charming and well-researched, if long-winded, tale of love and survival.
03/01/2019
DEBUT This first novel takes on the real-life story of the Dionne Quintuplets, born in Northern Ontario in 1934. Fictional nurse Emma Trimpany follows the journey of these five girls who were taken from their French Canadian family and raised "scientifically" by the Ontario government until age nine. The Dionne Quints were a huge tourist attraction and in later life sued the government for a share of the millions made off their childhoods. This novel is told in letters and journal entries by Emma, interspersed with newspaper clippings (some real, some invented). The majority of the characters are real, and Emma's role is one of observer; when the Dionne experiment ends, the author seems a little uncertain where to take her fictional characters, and so the denouement is a series of disasters visited upon the unlucky Emma. VERDICT While the Dionne story is fascinating, the fictional elements are underdeveloped, with historical reportage taking the lead. For a deeper understanding of the true story, readers would be better off with one of the classic biographies or one of the Dionne sisters' memoirs. [See Prepub Alert, 10/1/18.]—Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.
