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Tulia May lives in rural Nova Scotia with her mother, who works in the laundry of the nearby Ideal Maternity Home. It's a place where unwed mothers can discreetly give birth, a place where adoptions by rich Americans can be quickly arranged. Tulia doesn't think about the workings of the home much; mostly she hates being roped in to helping scrub the endless diapers. Her friend Finny Paul has suspicions that the home is holding sinister secrets--the worst being that unadoptable babies are being buried in butterboxes--but Tulia thinks he's being ridiculous. When Tulia's sister Becky ends up in the home, Tulia truly starts to consider Finny's concerns. And when she and Finny discover what's really going on there, she knows she has to act quickly to keep Becky's baby safe.
Based on the true story of the Ideal Maternity Home, and its tragic Butterbox Babies,
The Family Way is a thoughtful and engaging exploration of family and of Nova Scotia's history. A stand-alone middle-grade novel, it also serves as a prequel to the critically acclaimed Cammie novels,
Flying With a Broken Wing and
Cammie Takes Flight.
About the author
Laura Best has had over forty short stories published in literary magazines and anthologies. Her first young adult novel,
Bitter, Sweet, was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. Her middle grade novel
Flying with a Broken Wing was named one of Bank Street College of Education's Best Books of 2015. Her most recent middle grade book,
Cammie Takes Flight, was nominated for the 2018 Silver Birch Award. Her first novel for adults,
Good Mothers Don't, was published in 2020. She lives in East Dalhousie, Nova Scotia, with her husband, Brian. Visit lauraabest.wordpress.com.
