Earn Bride Of New France Assembled By Suzanne Desrochers PDF

I really loved this book! First of all, who wouldn't love the cover It spoke to me from the book shelf, . . The woman's profile so mysterious and dark and then edged all around like a cut out, gilt paper snowflake, I had to pick it up,

And listen to the first quote inside:

"But what shall I tell you of migrations when in this empty sky
the precise ghosts of departed summer birds
still trace old signs.
"

Leonard Cohen
"The Sparrows," In Let Us Compare Mythologies

Poetic and beautiful Yes, and so is the book,


Suzanne Desrochers doesn't write like a novelist, particularly, She's obviously a researcher who is working on her thesis, as is expressed right up front, But what she has is a heart for her research material, She has a sensibility for it, and she's translated that to her story in a most magnificent way,

While her plot development rests safely in the hands of history, Ms Desrocher is called upon

to create the life of her protagonist Laure Beausejour within the confines of the times in Paris and then in Montreal in its savage and New World days.
The story is absorbing in fine details of the asylum Laure has to bear as a child, the ship she must sail in and her ultimate sufferings as a lonely and mistreated wife in the barrens of Canada.


What's lacking in this otherwise gorgeous novel is real heart and emotion, It really pains me to say that I didn't feel the strong emotions that should have been evoked from some of the dire circumstances presented, There were many examples of human suffering, and several examples where great love and passion are told, But the maturity of writing that would cause a reader not just to read about these passions, but to actually experience them along with the characters was missing in this book.
I chalk it up to being a debut novel from a very brilliant student of migration of women to North America, She had lovable characters in mind and a great story to tell about them, but the heart of the emotions seemed difficult to pull off in every case, Sometimes it did work, but many opportunities were missed,

The author shows much promise in this book, however, I loved reading the story, It was beautiful and absorbing as a tale of hardship and love, . . the struggles of women in the early days of populating North America, Days when sailing across the Atlantic was as dangerous as flying to the moon, and the prospect of finding a husband in Canada was as frightening as finding one in Afghanistan.
My heart went out to Laure, her darling friend and her heroic lover,

This is a book well worth the reading, I'm so glad I took a chance on it, I highly recommend it, and I hope Ms Desrochers will continue with her novel writing, She shows great promise! I'll be buying her next book, . .

PS: Lovers of needlework will love the references to Laure and her This book piqued my interest because the whole filles du roi history was unknown to me.
I am very interested in stories about the settlement of Canada,
So to that end, I am glad I picked up this book, As the novel started out as the author's thesis, it is very well researched, and filled with interesting details,
The midwife was the only character that felt real to me, Both her actions and her dialogue were believable, None of the other characters seemed fully formed, they felt more like caricatures,
Once in Canada, Laure seems to lose every inch of backbone that she had in France, becoming a shell of her former self, Had she maintained that backbone, her story in Canada would have been much more interesting, This novel came with a "National Bestseller" label and a glowing recommendation by Joseph Boyden, one of my favourite authors, but I was disappointed,

The book tells the story of Laure Beausejour, one of the filles du roi sent by royal decree to New France betweenandto become marriage partners to wouldbe colonists and so expand the European population.
The daughter of street entertainers, she is incarcerated in the Hospice de la Salpetriere which houses thousands of women: prostitutes, the indigent, and the insane, She is chosen to be one of the King's Daughters and is sent to the New World where she is married to a man who abandons her so she must survive the winter by herself in a halfbuilt shack.
Her only friend is Deskaheh, an Iroquois man,

Characterization is one flaw in the book, As the protagonist, Laure is not especially welldeveloped, The author, in an afterword, describes Laure as "A dreamer and a pragmatist, . . with an insurmountable spirit" and precocious determination"but what stands out is her selfishness, She convinces Madeleine, her devoted but frail and innocent friend, to accompany her on her journey the consequences are tragically predictable, Such selfishness makes her an unlikable character, What Desrochers describes as "precocious determination" is really naivety, a naivety which combined with selfishness and stubbornness endangers both herself and others several times throughout the novel,

Furthermore, Laure behaves inconsistently: at the beginning she easily escapes her prison to visit Mireille Langlois in the hospital, Incidentally, Mireille is someone to whom she had never spoken so even Laure's best friend wonders "why she was risking so much for Mireille, whom she disliked", However, when Laure is chosen to go on a oneway transport to Canada, "a punishment thought by many to be worse than death", she makes no attempt to escape her fate.


Other characters fare no better, Madeleine is so angelic as to be unbelievable, Her one transgression is "vowing she would cause trouble in the dormitory if she were left behind"when Laure is banished to Canada, With a few exceptions, those in authority are meanspirited people with little sympathy for the suffering of others, Even the cliche of the noble savage is embodied in Deskaheh,

The book was begun as an M, A. thesis project and has stayed as such: it is more a thesis than a novel, It catalogues the struggles of life in Salpetriere and in the struggling colony, Much of the plot seems contrived to use as much research as possible, There is a great deal of exposition: this happened and then this happened, The result is that the reader is indifferent to the outcome of Laure's trials and tribulations, Presumably the historical information is accurate, although the description of the climb to the top of Mount Royal in VilleMarie Montreal gave me pause,

The use of the present tense for historical fiction is questionable, That tense is supposed to suggest that events are happening in real time, but that is clearly not the case, so the choice is confusing,

Another weakness is the extensive use of romance fiction cliches: the beautiful orphan trapped by circumstance and condemned to a loveless marriage seeks love elsewhere,

The book gives a picture of the harsh realities of life in an inhospitable environment, both in Paris and in New France as a work of fiction, however, it is less successful.


Please check out my blog sitelink blogspot. ca/ and follow me on Twitter DCYakabuski, I was pretty disappointed with this book, Most of it takes place in France, not Quebec, the main character I found to be extremely unlikable, the text was repetitive, and for the most part it was depressing and no one gets a happy ending.


I was also pretty offput by the constant use of the term "savage" and going on and on about how gross and ugly the Indigenous characters were.
Yes, it might be historically accurate, but it was offensive to read,

On the audiobook side, the narrator chose to read the entire thing in a somewhat mediocre French accent, instead of just doing the dialogue in an accent, which made it kind of hard to tell when the main character was actually talking out loud and when she was just thinking.


I was hoping this would provide me with some inspiration to research my fille du roi ancestors, but it kind of did the opposite, This novel follows a young girl, Laure, from the Saltpêtrière Hospital in Paris, a orphanage, school and poorhouse, to the early town of VilleMarie in New France.
Laure was taken to the Saltpêtrière when she was very young, grabbed from the arms of her begging parents by the city's archers, She was lucky to be taken in by a sponsor, but now that lady has died and Laure is back in the Saltpêtrière being trained as a seamstress.
She is luckier than most, as she can read and write and has skill with a needle, but when she displeasures the Mother Superior, she is sent to be a bride to the men of New France.
She is among many others sent for this duty, but she feels very isolated, As she adjusts to life in the new world, she discovers things about herself and what she is willing to do to survive,
I can't say I really liked Laure, she always seems to think herself superior to the others, whether in Paris due to her sewing and lacemaking skills, or in the new world.
But she is definitely a survivor and accepts what she must agree to in order to find a life for herself, She is still young when the book ends, and one hopes she finds herself a life she can enjoy in the future, The history was interesting. I appreciate a counternarrative to the shiny Canadian historiographies of the “filles du roi, ” And, while this partially delivered a new and honest perspective on the colonial conditions of socalled New France, the antiIndigenous narrative was well beyond historical reporting and was inappropriately indulgent.
. . and any possible explanation was somehow not even worth a mention in the historical notes at the end Lame, Gross. No thanks. Four for historical research, two for bringing it to life, I did really enjoy this book about an orphan who is sent unwillingly to the backwoods of Canada in thes to become the bride of an ignorant trapper, but it was difficult to summon up any heartfelt sympathy for her because the story is told in such flat prose.
What I especially valued was the knowledge I gained from learning about this period of history, especially from such a dedicated historian as the author Suzanne Derochers, who wrote this originally for a Ph.
D. thesis. A perfect book for a perfect day of reading, curled up in bed with some tea! This is an easy and quick read, but although it is light, it is still engaging.
I like the portrayal of the characters, the descriptions of a very impoverished life without feeling sorry for the women, it was a good blend of realism and acceptance of what life was like for many at that time.
I also liked the thorough description and time spent in the first part of the book in France, understanding more about the true natures of the characters so that later, in the chapters about the voyage to Canada and the time there, their actions made sense.
The story was well paced and while descriptive, not overly so, I really wanted to love this because I'm definitely on a historical fiction kick, and the filles de roi were something I didn't know anything about,

The story follows Laure, an "orphan" from France who is sent to New France Canada in the lates as a part of the King's plan to populate the new colony.
It's a fascinating piece of history, and perhaps the story would have been better in the hands of a better writer,

This book wasn't bad, but it was clearly by someone who was new at the craft of novel writing, Laure was poorly characterized and never grew or changed throughout the story and the first twothirds of the book contained so much extraneous detail that I lost interest at times.
Many of the storylines introduced early in the novel have no tie to the overall arc, which was frustrating, The author spent far too little time on Laure's life in Canada and never really ended the story or wrapped up Laure's storyline, which was an unsatisfactory ending, Tenía la necesidad de leermelo entero, pero es un libro bastante deprimente, donde la heroína no pasa mas que fatigas, y todo es feo, y triste a su alrededor.
Me ha dejado una sensación amarga, esperaba algo mas ligero, Tampoco me ha apasionado la forma en que está escrito, la verdad, Un poco decepción. I was disappointed Laure, who I felt was an entirely onedimensional character, and an unlikeable one at that,

I thought it was very strange to have the narrative written in the third person since we get very little detail outside of what is going on in Laure's head it comes off a little bit like streamofconsciousness in third person, which can be effective in certain circumstances, but wasn't here.
The style did help convey Laure's stateofmind when she was left alone for an entire winter season, but that's about it,

Laure was completely selfinvolved, and had no emotional connection to any other character in the book, Even her relationship with her supposed best friend felt false when she died I got the impression that Laure was more upset because the situation was injurious to her.
I wish that we could have heard from any other character, especially Deskaheh,
.