Rachel

"The exception was Friday when he would appear earlier and, dressed in slacks, sweater and polo shirt, would leave by mid-morning for a golf outing. Often Rachel would pull up in a butter-colored Mercedes station wagon and Don would plop himself down in the passenger seat, pluck some business plans and a copy of Business Week from the brown leather Hartman briefcase which accompanied him everywhere, and the pair would head to Carmel and their weekend home, which was conveniently located close to two of America’s great golf courses, Pebble Beach and Spyglass."

"It was all too much; their mother was unable to cope. Not long after her sixth child, Suzanne, was born, Rachel suffered a serious depression and lost touch with reality. The crash had been too brutal; everything they had built was crumbling. In Chicoutimi, she had had her own car, a Cadillac. Now the family drove an old wreck, as ragged as their lives—*her* life—had become. The only solution was to commit her to a psychiatric institution. The closest option, Saint-Michel-Archange de Québec hospital (better known under its previous name, *l’Asile,* meaning “the Asylum”), was a few hundred kilometres from the family home. How long would it take for her to heal? When would she be returning home? No one could answer these questions, to which the children constantly pleaded for answers. Another question was more pressing: How could the family endure her absence when the father was away working from morning until night, and there were six children in the home, including a newborn baby? The oldest daughter, Christiane, was barely 10 years old. Nevertheless, she had no choice but to sacrifice her own education, quitting school to become the surrogate mother for that lost tribe, stranded in the snow-covered woods."