The Family Way

Tulia May is only 12, but she is expected to accept an adult role, helping out with her mother’s work in the laundry at the nearby Ideal Maternity Home. She occasionally has a chance to get away from the mountains of dirty diapers long enough to visit the nursery and actually see some of the infants. She doesn’t particularly think about how the home is being run until her friend Finny Paul suggests there are mysteries and secrets which need to be investigated. He is suspicious that babies deemed ‘unadoptable’ are being starved and then buried in butterboxes. Tulia only takes matters seriously when her sister Becky ends up at the home and Tulia realizes she must take action to keep Becky and her baby safe.

Tulia is a wonderful main character, an intriguing combination of adult and child. Like many young girls, she is just beginning to develop an interest in boys, and even the local dance holds some appeal this year for the tomboy-ish Tulia. However, the book revolves around Tulia’s role as a worker at the maternity home and her eventual discovery of what is really happening there. Tulia wants to be helpful and wants to comply with her Ma’s wishes, but certainly has a mind of her own which makes her very determined and impels her to take action when it is necessary. By the end of the novel, she is older, wiser, and infinitely more aware of the circumstances and events around her.

Ma also has an interesting character, formed in part by living through the Depression and bringing up a large family. After Tulia’s father died, Ma was forced to take on whatever work she could find. She is resourceful and independent, strong-willed and stoic. She never seems to stop working, and Tulia comments that her mood can be judged by how quickly her knitting needles clack together.

Finny Paul also deserves special mention as an engaging character. Despite being bullied and looked down on by many in town because of his Indigenous roots, he isn’t afraid to stand up for his beliefs. He is inquisitive, determined and just brash enough to go where he isn’t wanted if he feels it’s the right thing to do.

Laura Best sets her book in rural Nova Scotia, and the story begins in 1939. Best will engage young adult readers as the book is written from a tween’s point of view. However, the historical aspects of the book will make it an interesting read for a much wider audience, including adults. The Ideal Maternity Home existed, as did the Butterbox Babies, so the novel is historically accurate, and Best helps shine a light on a sad and tragic story.

Best makes the history come alive not only with the maternity home and its secrets but with other events of the time. The Great Depression is just coming to an end, and Ma and Tulia are still very much living with the economic hardships it brought on. Tulia is fascinated by the Dionne Quintuplets, adding photos and clippings about them to her scrapbook and hoping to visit Ontario and Quintland as soon as she can. Near the end of the book, World War Two becomes a reality and family members and friends of Tulia are signing up to fight in Europe. Rather than being a dry novel filled with dates and names, Laura Best manages to work all of these major world events into Tulia’s life, and her story gives readers a very personal experience of them thanks to Tulia’s reactions.

Laura Best is an acclaimed author, and many readers will be familiar with her other novels Flying with a Broken Wing and Cammie Takes Flight. In fact, The Family Way is a prequel to the other books. The author says that, after writing the two Cammie novels, there was still much she didn’t know about her protagonist and “What I eventually ended up discovering was a secret that even I didn’t see coming” (Preface to novel). So, many readers will enjoy this novel - whether as a stand-alone book, as a prequel to the rest of the series, or as the inspiration to carry on and read Best’s other books.