'Stunning moving and remarkable' Nguyen Phan Que Mai internationally bestselling author of
The Mountains Sing and Dust Child 'A celebration of complicity and love among women' Pilar
Quintana shortlisted for the National Book Award author of The Bitch and Abyss '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 Paris 1720. The Hospice of La Salpêtrière is
overrun with 'difficult' women. Halfway around the world on the American frontier French
settlers are in want of wives. At the asylum a list is drawn up: eighty-eight women of
childbearing age to be shipped to New Orleans. Among them are Charlotte Geneviève and
Pétronille - a sharp-tongued orphan an accused abortionist and a rumoured madwoman. They
make the voyage over the ocean knowing nothing of the harsh and extraordinary lives that await
them or how they will come to love and betray each other time and again in this wild and
beautiful land. Bold thrilling and startlingly intimate PELICAN GIRLS is a powerful vision
of female friendship identity and desire and the choices women make in their unshakeable will
to survive . For readers of Barbara Kingsolver Lauren Groff and The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li.
'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's Best (and Most Anticipated) Fiction Books of 2024
