We Were Not Spoiled: A Franco-American Memoir - Paperback

by Denis LeDoux (Author), Lucille Verreault LeDoux (Author)

"My education was less important to my parents than my little pay. They wanted me to work and turn my wages over to them."

We Were Not Spoiled chronicles the early life of a Franco-Mainer born in 1921 in Lewiston and raised there. Lucille Verreault Ledoux's life is typical of many Franco-American women of her generation, children of immigrants to the US from French Canada, and, as such, the book is an important addition to our understanding of Maine's ethnically diverse communities in the last century. We Were Not Spoiled offers insight into Franco-American social life and identity of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

In this story of the effects of immigration to the US from French Canada, we glimpse into the lives of French-speaking women and girls in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. French Canadian culture continued to be alive in the New England girls who people this eminently readable memoir.

YOU WILL FIND OVERLOOKED LIVES

We Were Not Spoiled reveals an eye for often neglected details, of information thought to be marginal and so too frequently lost to students of history. A basic function of memoir is to give witness to a time and a way of life gone by, and this book succeeds well at this. In its pages, we find ourselves going with Lucille into textile mills of the Northeast US, living religious orthodoxy, and creating an identity for herself as a woman, wife and mother in the context of industrial New England..

WHAT AMAZON REVIEWERS HAVE SAID OF We Were Not Spoiled.

"The narrative is crisp and descriptive, and the story flowed at a good pace to keep me turning the pages. I thoroughly enjoyed reading We Were Not Spoiled and highly recommend it as an enjoyable, enlightening read." -Kathy Pooler

"This book was so interesting that I did not put it down until I had finished reading it... Denis has done an excellent job in portraying his mother's family life." -Colin Guest

"We Were Not Spoiled is presented like a story told at the kitchen table of Lucille's experience growing up French in Maine." -Roland Vallerand

We Were Not Spoiled is full of period photos and notes to support the significance of the text for historical reference.

This is a Franco-American tale, a New England memoir, but even more an American story.

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