
The Miracle & Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets
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Narrated by:
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Robin Miles
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By:
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Sarah Miller
In this riveting, beyond-belief true story from the author of The Borden Murders, meet the five children who captivated the entire world.
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. Overnight, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie Dionne mesmerized the globe, defying medical history with every breath they took. 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.
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. 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.
©2019 Sarah Miller (P)2019 and On Listening LibraryListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"[A] thorough, fascinating deep dive into the lives of five girls who captured the attention of millions" (Booklist, starred review)
"Miller demonstrates herself once again to be a dab hand at examining a historic media frenzy and analyzing the legacy of its lore, leaving trails of ill-informed opinion and blame that lingers into the present." (Bulletin, starred review)
“It is impossible not to feel the tragedy of the quintuplets’ lives...eye-opening, thoroughly researched.” (Publishers Weekly)
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Fascinating
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Loved the book!
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Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and marie
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loved this!
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Dionne Quints
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Interesting, engaging, and a balanced view
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The only thing that drove me CRAZY was reading their 5 names instead of just saying “The Quints” every. single. time. MAYBE that’s for their sake though-to give each girl their own identity?
Love the Quints!
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Fascinating!
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I absolutely love large families having been the middle child in a large family myself, but I can’t imagine the difficult impact it must have had on the older children having those five celebrity little sisters. Even this book, as well done as it was, barely touches on what life was like for those other children. I don’t know how even the very best parents could manage to care for five newborn babies, whose survival was so unlikely, while also meeting the needs of five other young children. Even with enormous levels of help that were less invasive than the help given to the Dionnes, it would’ve been an incredible disruption to the older kids’ childhoods. But whether we come from a large family or a small family, we are going to have challenges in our lives. Maybe the best we can do is hope that those challenges manage to bring out strengths in us that we might not have discovered otherwise.
So well-written and beautifully read, but so sad!
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SPOILERS if you don’t know the story.
I’ve read about and saw documentaries on the Dionne Quintuplets since I was a young girl fascinated by the first surviving identical quintuplets. THE MIRACLE AND TRAGEDY OF THE DIONNE QUINTUPLETS by Sarah Miller covers some new territory, goes deeper into the sexual abuse the girls suffered at the hands of their father and confirms the suicide of one quint.
The story focuses less on the quints and more on the commercialization of the girls from the time they were babies, which was of no interest to me since I already knew those details. I wish Miller had used a more narrative approach to the story, showing instead of telling and giving more of a feel for the quints as individuals. Miller does explore some of the different trajectories the Dionne quintuplets’ lives took as adult, though never to the level of giving the story heart and soul.
Watching a documentary would be more interesting than reading THE MIRACLE AND TRAGEDY OF THE DIONNE QUINTUPLETS.
Narration elevates the story
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