Those rushing to provide support simultaneously saved the quintuplets' lives and wreaked emotional havoc upon the family. Together, the five babies weighed only 13 pounds, 6 ounces, and their desperate parents, Oliva and Elzire Dionne, traded privacy for critical necessities: breast milk and incubators. 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.īeginning two days after their premature birth in rural Ontario on May 28, 1934, "the lives of the Dionne quintuplets were inextricably bound with the press," asserts Miller (Caroline: Little House, Revisited), whose headline-style chapter titles reinforce that point in this compelling account. 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.
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