Julia Malye

Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France's colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a hundred female "volunteers" of childbearing age--orphans, prisoners, and mental patients--to be shipped to New Orleans. Among this group are three unlikely a sharp-tongued twelve-year old orphan,...