Member Reviews
Reviewer 434170
**3.5 Stars** Raised to 4.
Thank you to NetGalley and Nimbus Publishing for the ARC. I was drawn to the title 'Searching for Mayflowers' because it evokes pleasant memories of wandering through the woods to see the provincial flower of Nova Scotia at the first glimpse of spring. While I don't recall ever picking any, I was always delighted to see them in bloom. An elderly native woman used to sell bunches door to door each spring. Interestingly, I grew up only four miles from the author, Lori MacKay, but decades earlier.
The author recounts how her grandmother would always have mayflowers, gathered from far and wide across the county. Lori wonders if her grandmother's efforts contributed to the flowers being placed on the current endangered list. Since her grandmother's death, she has searched for mayflowers but has yet to find them. I now live in a city and can no longer walk in the woods, but this spring, a friend sent me a photo of a vase filled with mayflowers, reassuring me that they are not extinct.
I found the book’s title somewhat misleading, as I had hoped for a nostalgic journey tied to the fragrant flowers of the forest. Rating this book fairly proved to be difficult. Mayflowers are only briefly mentioned on page 49 of my Kindle and are repeated near the end of the book. The author states her goal was to tell the family history so that those people would not be forgotten by future generations, and she succeeded through interviews and extensive research. The writing itself was well done, though I wonder about the relevance of the family tree for the general reader.
Lori shares the story of the first Canadian quintuplets, born in 1880 in the small Nova Scotia farm community where she grew up. She admits to being obsessed with telling their story since childhood. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sanitation and modern medical procedures at the time, the babies died shortly after birth. She also discovered that a great-great-grandmother assisted with the births, but only the male doctor's name was recorded, leaving the female ancestor unmentioned. The doctor arrived after the babies had been born.
The book explores the arrival of the earliest Scottish settlers in Pictou County and the dire conditions they faced during their ocean voyage. There are descriptions of the small farms in the area where the quints were born, detailing the community home life, furnishings, and hardships, and the challenging work. It delves into the history of the area and nearby locations, revealing the lives of women in the 1880s, birthing conditions, the role of midwives, and the many deaths caused by communicable diseases. The narrative touches on significant topics such as the invention of the incubator, early photography, burial rituals, undertakers, and local cemeteries. There are even references to the graves of Titanic victims and over 2,000 deaths from the Halifax Explosion. While some of the digressions felt somewhat tangential, many were nonetheless fascinating to read.
I had never heard of the quintuplets born in 1880, but I grew up seeing news and photos of the Dionne quintuplets in Quebec nearly fifty years later, and who lived to adulthood. Great strides have been made in medical science, improving the chances of survival for multiple births today. Lori chronicles instances of multiple births worldwide, which have risen with the introduction of fertility drugs, and she discusses the factors contributing to the children's upbringing that enable them to become well-adjusted adults. She even mentions the well-known case of a woman who gave birth to eight babies after taking fertility drugs; all eight children survived and are reportedly doing well at age fifteen. (Google led me to the case in Mali in 2021, when a woman gave birth to nine healthy babies in a Moroccan hospital. All nine children are reported to be thriving, and pictures can be found on the internet.)
Some parts of the book felt like filler, but many of these sections were nonetheless informative and entertaining.
