The Quintland Sisters went on sale March 5, 2019 and was an instant bestseller on the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star Canadian bestsellers list, holding the #1 spot for its first five weeks in print. The French edition, Auprès Des Jumelles Dionne translated by Sophie Cardinal-Corriveau and published by Éditions Hurtubise, came out April 28, 2021. Auprès Des Jumelles Dionne est la version française publiée aux Éditions Hurtubise, le 28 avril, 2021.
Find reader questions for The Quintland Sisters HERE.
Praise for The Quintland Sisters
“With a quiet, patient plotting any Gothic novelist would applaud, Wood builds to her tragedy’s crescendo.”
– Globe and Mail
“Wood’s novel is riveting and heartbreaking and definitely worth a read. It brings to light a tragic story that Canada is in danger of forgetting.”
– Niagara Life
“Three parts fact plus one part fiction equals a delicious bit of storytelling. . . . Wood uses archived newspaper stories and the fictionalized journal entries of a young nursing assistant to give her debut novel legs, leaving readers to decide who are the bad guys and the good guys in this historic Canadian saga.”
– Winnipeg Free Press
“Told by a fictional narrator but laden with disturbing truths, this recounting of a blight on our history is as fascinating as it is informative.”
– Canadian Living
“The Quintland Sisters” is an engaging and thoughtful fictionalized account of the early lives of the Dionne quintuplets. It’s evident that Shelley Wood put extensive research into this, her debut novel. . . . Through the use of fictionalized journal entries and letters, Wood tells of the machinations of all parties involved: the parents, the doctors, the Canadian government. She remains even-handed in her criticism and praise.”
– The Yakima Herald
“A charming and well-researched . . . tale of love and survival.”
– Kirkus Reviews (Full review)
“Wood cleverly combines fact and fiction in a fast-paced novel that will leave readers contemplating how the best intentions of government intervention can have dire, unanticipated consequences.”
– Publishers Weekly (Full review)
“Wood has crafted an ambitious, meticulously researched, and imaginative debut novel that is engrossing and compelling. Exploring the shared sisterhood of the quintuplets’ caretakers and the trouble with unwanted celebrity, this heartwarming novel will win over loyal readers of Patricia Harman, Jodi Picoult, and Carol Cassella.”
– BookList
“The Quintland Sisters is an impeccably researched historical novel that will enthrall you. From the moment Shelley Wood introduced the remarkable Dionne quintuplets, I was utterly captivated. Wood’s vivid story-telling through the eyes of a young nursing assistant perfectly captures the astonishing birth and early days of the famous quintuplets’ lives. Wood has masterfully brought the Quints’ small Ontario farming community of the early 1930’s to life, as well as all the characters that come in and out of their surreal and extraordinary world. I could not get this story out of my head long after I finished reading it.”
– Joanna Goodman, author of The Home for Unwanted Girls
“The Quintland Sisters is a stunning novel about five girls caught in the seam of history, at the intersection of dueling cultures, classes, languages, and faiths in the last years before World War Two. Through the eyes of the Dionne sisters’ longest-serving nurse, Wood tells the heartbreaking story of how the miraculous survival of five identical sisters born to a poor family in Quebec devolved into a naked battle for money and fame that corrupted even those who loved them. Meticulously researched and sensitively told, this book is a journey not to be missed.”
– Heather Young, author of The Lost Girls
“Before the fishbowl world of reality television and carefully curated social media accounts, there was Quintland. In The Quintland Sisters, Wood deftly captures the fascinating collisions between faith and science, powerful and poor, and the tensions that arise when a rural town and its inhabitants are cast under the relentless scrutiny of the public’s obsession with one extraordinary family. The story of the Dionne quintuplets serves as a timely reminder of the humanity we all share, no matter our differences in social class, religion, or nationality.”
– Elise Hooper, author of The Other Alcott and Learning to See
“Whether or not you’re familiar with the story of the Dionne quintuplets, you’ll appreciate the meticulous attention to historical detail in this compelling reimagining of five famous lives, and find yourself immediately drawn into a world where fact and fiction are seamlessly blended and a beautiful, tragic mystery is unspooled. This is a gorgeously written novel about miracles, love, and resilience.”
– Marissa Stapley, author of Mating for Life and Things to Do When It’s Raining
*****
In Shelley Wood’s fiction debut, readers are taken inside the devastating true story of the Dionne Quintuplets, told from the perspective of one young woman who meets them at the moment of their birth.
Reluctant midwife Emma Trimpany is just 17 when she assists at the harrowing birth of the Dionne quintuplets: five tiny miracles born to French farmers in hardscrabble Northern Ontario in 1934. Emma cares for them through their perilous first days and when the government decides to remove the babies from their francophone parents, making them wards of the British king, Emma signs on as their nurse.
Over 6,000 daily visitors come to ogle the identical “Quints” playing in their custom-built playground; at the height of the Great Depression, the tourism and advertising dollars pour in. While the rest of the world delights in their sameness, Emma sees each girl as unique: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Émilie. With her quirky eye for detail, Emma records every strange twist of events in her private journals.
As the fight over custody and revenues turns increasingly explosive, Emma is torn between the fishbowl sanctuary of Quintland and the wider world, now teetering on the brink of war. Steeped in research, The Quintland Sisters is a novel of love, heartache, resilience, and enduring sisterhood—a fictional, coming-of-age story bound up in one of the strangest true tales of the past century.
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