the miracle and tragedy of the dionne quintuplets

The moment they dreaded had come.įor the first time in their lives, the Dionne Quintuplets were going home. Marie tried to tell a silly story, but no one laughed.Īt the sound of their father’s footsteps in the hall, all five sisters hugged their Shirley Temples closer to their chests. Émilie prayed that it was all just a bad dream. Cécile sat in a corner, rocking her doll. Annette quietly seethed, pretending not to be afraid. Yvonne stared out the window at the yellow brick mansion up the hill. Five smiling Shirley Temple dolls were clutched in their arms. In an empty nursery, behind two woven wire fences topped with barbed wire, five nine-year-old girls waited for their father. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Here, Sarah Miller reconstructs their unprecedented upbringing with fresh depth and subtlety, bringing to new light their resilience and the indelible bond of their unique sisterhood. The Dionne Quintuplets became a more popular attraction than Niagara Falls, ogled through one-way screens by sightseers as they splashed in their wading pool at the center of a tourist hotspot known as Quintland.

In an effort to protect them from hucksters and showmen, the Ontario government took custody of the five identical babies, sequestering them in a private, custom-built hospital across the road from their family-and then, in a stunning act of hypocrisy, proceeded to exploit them for the next nine years. Overnight, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie Dionne mesmerized the globe, defying medical history with every breath they took. When the Dionne Quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, weighing a grand total of just over 13 pounds, no one expected them to live so much as an hour. In this riveting, beyond-belief true story from the author of The Borden Murders, meet the five children who captivated the entire world.

The miracle and tragedy of the dionne quintuplets