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‘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 Salpetriere 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, Genevieve and Petronille – 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 startling 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

Publisher Review

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. In the mid-18th century, a group of women “of childbearing age” are sent from La Salpetriere asylum in Paris to wed settlers in New Orleans, where three unlikely friends must band together to survive abuses of both the body and the heart * Elle’s Best (and Most Anticipated) Fiction Books of 2024 * 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 A richly layered multi-character narrative of a long-overlooked period in history… 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 Pelican Girls is a marvellous 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 A feat of sublime imagination, every page a wonder. Malye has written an unforgettably rich and sensual novel – a triumph — Elizabeth McKenzie This book fascinates me. It’s moving in every way: a celebration of complicity and love among women . . . 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 To enter Julia Malye’s work is to be completely transported . . . 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