The Magdalen Girls highlights an unfortunate period of history in which girls/women were committed to work in the Catholic Laundries --against their wills--for such infractions as: sex before marriage, unwed pregnancies, thief, etc. Their parents signed the papers hoping the nuns would straighten them out ,and to avoid the embarrassment of having a wayward daughter. You will note that the boys involved got off scot free, as it were. The laundries operated mostly in Ireland with chapters in Canada, Australia, the US. It is a dark period of abuse in the history of the church, with many lives crushed.

Though the subject matter is tough to read, it is told in a fictional story of three teens who are incarcerated there. In places the author seems a bit heavy-handed with the girls, but her research backs her up. As the old saying goes, if we do not want a repeat of this less than pleasant history---we must learn from it.

I am glad I read this book, learning something I knew little about, of the history of the Catholic laundries. It has stayed with me, the treatment of those girls and women.