The simple and direct speech of Marie-Jeanne is powerful and often hauntingly lyrical. Harrington’s fact-based novel shows the incredible, dogged courage of a remarkable woman. Marie-Jeanne’s story is one every woman should read.

Sample

I have tried, always, to bring poetry into my life, but maybe I have been wrong to do so.  Perhaps poetry was not meant for people such as me, or perhaps there really is no poetry in life.
 I am not an extraordinary person.  I am not a well-educated person.  You must forgive my mistakes.  Yes, I have had dreams of greater things, as I am sure most people have had, but I have always held those dreams in a separate place - as if they were something to be kept alone; in a special world that is not a real part of life.
 I have read, somewhere, that when great people are born, there is some disturbance of the heavens.  The book I read told me that shooting stars have been seen to announce the birth of some important person.  I don’t believe such things.  Truth is something you can lay your hands on; not wish about.  If we could wish our way to what we want, then we would all be happy.  I don’t know why we are here.  That is something for people smarter than me to figure out.  I only know what has been, and what I have done to deal with it.
On January 17th, 1937, in Cap de la Madelaine, Quebec, there was no evidence that any such disturbance was seen.  This is the date on which I was born – a girl child.
Nothing comes of nothing.  This, I believe, is a great truth.  I came from nothing – I will go to nothing.  I can only wish it different.
I remember things from the past as if they had happened only yesterday.  I don’t know if this is good or if there is any truth to be taken from it.  Sometimes, dreams are mixed with the truth and it is difficult to judge which is which.  I think we all change the truth a bit, so that we can deal with it.
If I am to tell my story, I must tell it as I know how.  I must tell what I remember, and how I remember it.  If some things are missed or absent, my ability as a writer has left them so.  I intend to write what is real for me; what I remember and what I think important.  I hope I can put it down as it really was, without any change.  I want my story told, but I don’t want anyone to think that I had changed things to make myself look better.  I remember things – little things that swoop into my mind like birds and settle on their perches.  I don’t know their significance – or if they have any significance at all.  It’s just that they stay with me.
I remember, for instance, from a very early age, going to the local store with red, green and blue tokens to buy things we needed.
We Canadians were at war. 
Each token was good for different things.  Meat, butter, eggs – all had different token values.  Some things were allowed once a week; others, twice.  It was a sacrifice we all paid for the war effort.  Our dedication to the defeat of an enemy we did not know was marked in red, green and blue tokens.
As a family, we did not have many tokens.  My father, Georges Leduc, worked as a carpenter and my mother, Jeanne-Francoise, worked at the Bendico shirt factory, making shirts.
I was born at home, as were my three older brothers; Louis, René and Marc.  My mother never saw a doctor during any of her pregnancies.  We were not good feed for doctors.  There was one time a doctor came.  It was in winter when my mother had a stillborn child.  I remember he disposed of the baby in the kitchen wood stove and left soon after.
Our house was always clean.  It was a small, white two-story house, with a white picket fence that my father had made and painted.  My father made and fixed many things.  He made toys for us; he fixed everything in the house.  I don’t think, somehow, that any of us really appreciated what he did to make our life easier.  But then, children never completely understand their parents and what has been given to them.  
In the summer time, we used to walk to church on Sundays.  We walked to the church in the centre of the town.  It was called the Notre Dame Du Cap Basilica.  It was very big.  It had a huge park in front of it with many devotional statues. 
I think I was four when I first went there.  I remember being amazed at its size and beauty.  God had to be very important, I felt.
The park had a really big bridge.  It ran across a small creek.  The whole bridge was a big rosary with beads of concrete.  We used to run and climb all over the bridge and I remember that my brother Marc once pushed me off the bridge and I fell to the grass below, laughing.  Laughter was a part of our life, no matter what trials we endured.
My father’s whole family would go to the park on a Sunday.  We would all bring picnic lunches.  There were more than thirty in my father’s family and we would almost fill one end of the park.  I loved the summer trips to the park.  The family was very musical and my Aunt Justine would bring her accordion to accompany the rest of the family as they sang.  They were beautiful singers and people in the park would stand around and listen to them.  If I saw angels, I saw them then.  This was a happy time for my parents as I remember they never had any fights in those days and they always seemed to be laughing.
In the wintertime our house and everyone else’s would be snowed in.  We would have to climb out of an upstairs window with our shovels to dig ourselves and our neighbours out.  We would walk the one-lane road to the church with the snow towering like the walls of the Basilica on either side of us.  After church, everyone would go to my father’s grandparents’ house to feed on meat pies and sweets that the aunts had cooked.  The food was wonderful.  It melted in your mouth and you always wanted more.  We children were not allowed any sweets until we had eaten everything on our dinner plates.  I was only four, then, but I remember it as if it was only yesterday.
I was four, too, when my Uncle Noel began to molest me.
He would come to our house while my mother was at work to look after us.  I was so afraid of him.  He would take me into a bedroom and lock the door so that my brothers could not see what was going on.  Then he would take my clothes off and lick my private parts.  He threatened me not to tell my mother. 
I began to have nightmares and could not eat.  I often wondered why my mother did not notice that I was getting very thin. 
Such strange things children feel and think.  We believe in our parents.  We trust them to protect us.  I did not tell my mother about Uncle Noel.  I do not think I could ever have done so.  She seemed so removed from me.  I cannot explain it, but she was distant – in a world that I could not touch.  There was no way I could talk to her about personal things. 
I told her nothing.  The images Uncle Noel built in my mind were too strong.  I did tell her everything, years later, but she didn’t believe me.  She refused to believe that Uncle Noel could do such things.  In some peculiar way, she shut her mind off and believed in the sanctity of her religion and the family.  I have long since discarded both of these beliefs.
Matters of this nature are worked into the cloth of life.  I speak of what Uncle Noel did to me.  They are neither good, nor bad in their occurrence.  They come to us.  Some say, they make us strong.  Others say that we are scarred for life.  I know only that I hated Uncle Noel and came to resent my mother. 
Milk was delivered, in those days, by horse and buggy in the summer and by sleigh in the wintertime.  In the winter the milk would have three or four inches of frozen cream above the bottle and the cap would be perched on top like a little hat.
I remember that Dad always bought a big block of maple sugar in the wintertime and would shave pieces of it onto the porridge my mother made us.  Then he would pour the cream from the milk on top.
Of my brothers, Louis was the oldest by six years and the most serious.  He would disapprove of our shenanigans and rarely took part in the games the rest of us played.  But when it came time for us to take punishment for our more daring escapades, he would plead on our behalf.  I remember once, when my father took his belt to me for losing the money I had been given to buy some groceries, Louis tried to reason with him.  It did no good.  We were poor, and money was scarce.  But I remember Louis pleading for me.
Later, as I cried in a corner, my other brothers laughed at me and called me names.  Louis didn’t.
The next day, I walked back and forth from the store a number of times, but I didn’t find the money.  I wanted so much to pay it back and see my father smile at me.
How strongly some memories hold a person, and how quickly others pass away.  A person has only their memories to live with and nothing more than a faint hope for a better world to go to. 
Perhaps this hope will be denied me, as I have long since given up any faith in God.  He has not treated me well.
Life in Quebec, in the early days, was often good.  I remember one Christmas we spent with my maternal grandparents near Shawinigan Falls.  We went by train most of the way, and Grandfather and my Uncle Martin met us in a small village with a large sleigh and a team of horses.  My Uncle Martin was only seventeen then.  He was a quiet man, with dark hair that fell both sides of his face.  I never saw him angry.  I remember that. 
Tucked into the sleigh, we covered ourselves with warm, sheepskin blankets and travelled to my grandfather’s farm in style.
I loved Grandfather’s farm.  There were so many unusual things to see.  One of them was a large treadmill in the barn that Grandfather had made to pump water to his stock.  He had two border collies, Milly and Pepper, I remember, and when it was time to feed the animals he would take his collies to the barn and let them in the treadmill.  At a signal from him, they would run like mad and pump water into the troughs.  He always rewarded them afterwards with milk from the cows.
The next day, we children went out in the sleigh with Grandfather and Uncle Martin to cut a large Christmas tree in the bush.  They chose one.   I had never seen such a big tree.  Grandfather and Uncle Martin cut it down and hooked it up behind the sleigh to pull it back to the farmhouse.  Then Grandfather put us in the sleigh and threw the sheepskins over us.
 Suddenly, we all heard a crashing noise and a big bear came out of the bush.  He stood tall and menacing, looking at us from no more than fifteen feet away.  Grandfather told us to be still and quiet.  We huddled under our sheepskins; deathly afraid.  After what seemed ages, my grandfather pulled down the top of the sheepskins and told us the bear had gone.  I swear I didn’t peep over the covers all the way back to the farm.
 The Christmas tree was set up in the parlour.  It was decorated with the ornaments my mother and the other women had made.
My aunt had made a beautiful angel.
“Come, Marie-Jeanne,” my Uncle Martin said, “you must put the angel on top of the tree.”
He lifted me up so I could do so. 
I felt so important.
“Always remember the angel, and she will look after you,” Uncle Martin whispered to me. 
I believed him.
We stayed until after the New Year and then we had to go home.  I was very sad to leave.  I did not know it then, but that would be the last time I would see my Uncle Martin.  He died when he was nineteen.  Apparently, he had gone out to the barn one day, loaded the milk churns and started the truck.  He loved what he did, but it was very hard work with long hours.  He must have fallen asleep.  They found him later, dead, with his head resting on the steering wheel.  Grandfather was broken-hearted.  He passed away a few months later.
I kept the angel, but somewhere over the years it was lost, like so many things.  God knows, I would have wanted to have it still, but many of the physical reminders of our past do not stay with us too long.  Why do we keep them?  Those that remain only gather dust.
My best friend of all was Mariel Gauthier.  She was the same age as me.  We would play for hours together.  Her father was a carpenter, like my Dad, but he didn’t have as good a job.  Mrs. Gauthier tried to make ends meet by taking in washing.  She worked very hard. 
Sometimes, Mariel and I would try to help her.  I remember, she would smile at our clumsy efforts and say, “Thank you,” in such a gentle voice.  She was such a sweet person.  She had long black, beautiful hair and I wanted hair like hers; but my mother wouldn’t let me grow it that long.
A lot of the time, Mariel and I would play down by a nearby stream.  I kept away from the house as much as I could.  Mariel and I had a favourite tree.  We used to climb it and sit together on a big branch hanging out over the water.  Mariel would tell me all her secrets and I would tell her most of mine.
It was in the winter of my sixth year, that the priest came to talk to Mrs. Gauthier while I was at her house.
He talked with Mrs. Gauthier in hushed tones in the parlour while Mariel and I played a board game on the kitchen table.  The priest left after a while and Mrs. Gauthier came and sat with us.  I saw, immediately, that she had been crying.  She told us that Mariel was going away to a Catholic orphanage, for a while, so that she could get a good education.  We didn’t understand, but we didn’t question what she said.
Two weeks later, Mariel and I said “Goodbye” and I never saw her again.
Years later, I learned that she had been sent first, to a Catholic orphanage and soon after, to a mental institution; she had become one of the “Duplessis Orphans”.
At that time, Maurice Duplessis, the Premier of Quebec, had thought of a plan to gain federal money by sending unwanted illegitimate children, or children that could not be supported by their parents, to Catholic orphanages.  From there, with the agreement of the Catholic Church, they were moved to mental institutions which, as health institutuions, could claim federal support for each child.  If, after some time, a parent asked about their child, they were told the child had died. 
Some of these children went through terrible tortures and never left the institutions.  They went mad. 
I don’t read the Bible much, these days.  If the Church can do as it pleases, where’s the sense?  We are told what to believe.  We are told how to manage every circumstance in our lives.  When those circumstances don’t become manageable, we are told to pray.    I don’t blame others who believe.  I know people have to have faith in something.  I know that only too well.
I missed Mariel for a long time.  But after a while, her face became no more than a fixed picture in my mind.  Memory plays strange tricks on a person.  We remember things as they were at one distinct point.  Nothing else comes to mind.  It is strange.  I remember her running and laughing.
Perhaps it isn’t the past that we should hold to.  After a time, it becomes nothing more than a flash photograph.  The trouble is, if we look forward, we worry more about the things that don’t happen than those that do.  I’ve had my fair share of those worries.  In my life, I’ve found it pays to look for the worst.  If it doesn’t happen, then you’re better off.
I am glad that I never knew earlier what happened to Mariel.  I want to think of her, always, as she was - happy and smiling, with her mother’s long hair, and running and laughing.