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The Girls of Belvedere
The sudden death of Kitty Murphy’s mother sends Kitty and her younger sisters, Hannah and Ruth, to an orphanage in St. John’s. Their brother is allowed to stay home because “boys earn and girls cost.” The next seven years are a test of endurance as they cope with brutality from a cruel, self-righteous nun and the bullies who curry the Sister’s favour. Kitty tries her best to protect her younger sisters in this unpredictable environment.
The 1940s in Newfoundland offered very little to a woman. Life in a fishing outport meant unrelenting poverty and an exhausting cycle of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing. Too many mothers died, and their children were turned over to the Sisters to raise in St. John’s. Mothers without husbands entered sudden and desperate relationships with men or fell into prostitution. Some women became nuns to escape motherhood with all its perils. They wanted a chance for peace and predictability. However, those young women discovered life in a cloister meant a different foot was on the back of your neck.
All these lives intersected at the doors of Belvedere Orphanage.
“Readers will find themselves cheering for the forgotten in Clemens’s debut novel, which will leave you wanting more. In a true-to-life fictionalized account of three motherless sisters at the Belvedere Orphanage, Clemens relates a tale of the sometimes whispered-about plight of the vulnerable in an institution society deemed safe and protective. When a terrible ordeal brings them to the hallowed halls, the girls are further traumatized by a zealous and malicious matron intent on breaking spirits under the guise of righteousness and all that is holy.”-- Ida Linehan Young, author of Tilly the Too-Tall Clover --
“Through her portrayal of three sisters growing up in Belvedere Orphanage in St. John’s, Clemens delivers a raw and emotional glimpse into a period of social change in Newfoundland.”-- Carolyn Morgan, author of Secrets between an Ocean and a Sea --
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