The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman

Set in 1950s Quebec, The Home for Unwanted Girls tells the heartbreaking story of Maggie Hughes, a young woman torn between her English-speaking father’s expectations and her French-speaking mother’s traditions. When Maggie falls in love with a poor French boy and becomes pregnant, her family forces her to give up her baby. Her daughter, Elodie, is raised in a harsh orphanage that becomes part of a government experiment turning orphanages into psychiatric hospitals. As Maggie’s life moves forward, she is haunted by the child she lost, while Elodie struggles to survive and understand a world that has stolen her identity. Decades later, mother and daughter are drawn together by a bond that refuses to be broken.