In the 17th century, hundreds of girls and women were sent from France – often against their will – to populate the New World. But little is known of these filles du roi, as they were dubbed, and they left almost nothing behind in the way of stories or documents of their experience. In her debut novel, Ontario-born Suzanne Desrochers weaves together history and fiction to dramatize the life of one imagined fille du roi, Laure Beausejour.

Much of Laure’s situation is typical of what is known about these young women. Taken from parents whose poverty is criminalized, she is placed in the infamous Salpêtrière poorhouse alongside other unwanted women of the era: orphans, prostitutes, the diseased, and the insane. Except for a brief time as a lady’s maid in a fine home, Laure knows only the life of the ­institution – a cold and damp existence that revolves around prayer, lace making, and a starvation diet. Desrochers’ descriptions are vivid and unforgiving; any romantic notions the reader may harbour about pre-revolutionary Paris disappear.

Laure’s intelligence and courage are both her greatest strengths and her fatal flaws, as they are the causes of her exile to New France, where the privations of Paris pale in comparison. Arriving at her destination after months at sea, and having survived a canoe trek hounded by flesh-gouging insects, Laure surveys her new home: “The charred remains of the trees block the settlers’ cabins…. The whole scene is grey and squalid, as if an army had just marched through this stretch of forest.” When winter comes, things only get worse.

Desrocher’s portrayal of her characters is sympathetic, despite their obvious flaws. Although derided by Laure, the other filles du roi are guilty of nothing but naïveté, and the nuns who govern them also possess complex emotions. Laure’s husband is not a simple brute, but rather lost and immature.

While her husband is away trapping, Laure begins an illicit relationship with Deskaheh, an Iroquois man. What results from this assignation is a powerful illustration of the brutality inherent in Laure’s situation. Laure’s story weighs heavily on the reader, but in her, Desrochers has given history’s silent filles du roi a voice.