Her name is Abbie. She is nineteen and she has had it with guys. Especially the wrong guys. 'Cause that's all she ever seems to meet. Oh, she likes guys just fine -- and they are kind of necessary, in a Mother Nature sort of way -- but she is just over it with the ones who drink all the time, and are forever taking pills and drifting off into their own little private Idaho. Abbie will just concentrate on getting through this final year of schooling in fashion design, because once outta here she is off to make her name. She's got her roommate Georgette and her best friend Pat, and they will be all the companionship she needs. And then she meets Franco. Dream on, Abbie. Dream on. In a style so fresh and original that it seems to practically reinvent prose, and with an energy that grabs the reader from the very outset, first-time novelist Julie Taylor succeeds with Franco American Dreams in bringing to life characters that defy you not to love them, no matter what your age. They and their story are funny, fabulous, far-out ... and so very, very real.

"A study of the manifestation and persistence of hybrid Franco-American literary, musical, culinary, and media cultures in North America, particularly New England and southern Louisiana"--

Every June the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, celebrates Franco-American Day, raising the Franco-American flag and hosting events designed to commemorate French culture in the Americas. Though there are twenty million French speakers and people of French or francophone descent in North America, making them the fifth-largest ethnic group in the United States, their cultural legacy has remained nearly invisible. Events like Franco-American Day, however, attest to French ethnic permanence on the American topography. In Franco-America in the Making, Jonathan K. Gosnell examines the manifestation and persistence of hybrid Franco-American literary, musical, culinary, and media cultures in North America, especially New England and southern Louisiana. To shed light on the French cultural legacy in North America long after the formal end of the French empire in the mid-eighteenth century, Gosnell seeks out hidden French or “Franco” identities and sites of memory in the United States and Canada that quietly proclaim an intercontinental French presence, examining institutions of higher learning, literature, folklore, newspapers, women’s organizations, and churches. This study situates Franco-American cultures within the new and evolving field of postcolonial Francophone studies by exploring the story of the peoples and ideas contributing to the evolution and articulation of a Franco-American cultural identity in the New World. Gosnell asks what it means to be French, not simply in America but of America.

What became of these millions of immigrant descendants? In "The Franco-Americans of New England" Yves Roby describes the first-person accounts of French Canadians' immigration to New England, as well as those of their descendants, and the Franco-Americans. Roby seeks to explain the genesis and evolution of this group and raises insightful questions regarding not only the Franco-Americans but also the integration of ethnocultural groups into Canadian society and the future of North American Francophonies.

Inès Murat’s readable and entertaining narrative introduces us to little-known facts about the adventures and misadventures of numerous French veterans of Waterloo who migrated to the United States. More often than not, their visions of life in this country conflicted with the original New World dream of the peaceful pioneer. For two centuries, the lure of what we now call the American Dream had beckoned rich and poor from the Old World. “In all respects,” said Napoleon, “America was our true refuge.” Reported by Las Cases in the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, this statement signifies only one phase of the connections between the Emperor and the United States. Anecdotes and incisive portraits of numerous Bonapartists who came to America vividly portray the complex intermeshing between the Emperor and the United States. Anecdotes and incisive portraits of numerous Bonapartists who came to America vividly portray the complex intermeshing between the ideals of the French Revolution and the new forms of freedom that had been born in America. These dramatic accounts bring to the foreground of history the impact of two world views—that of the Old World, sheltered in the shadow of Napoleon’s belief in historical destiny, and that of the New World, more experimental and industrious. The clash produced a resounding din in the Napoleonic epoch, for which Napoleon and the American Dream traces new routes and relationships between two cultures.

Nearly one-third of Maine residents have French blood and are known as Franco-Americans. Many trace their heritage to French Canadian families who came south from Quebec in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to work in the mills of growing communities such as Auburn, Augusta, Biddeford, Brunswick, Lewiston, Saco, Sanford, Westbrook, Winslow, and Waterville. Other Franco-Americans, known as Acadians, have rural roots in the St. John Valley in northernmost Maine. Those of French heritage have added a unique and vibrant accent to every community in which they have lived, and they are known as a cohesive ethnic group with a strong belief in family, church, work, education, the arts, their language, and their community. Today they hold posts in every facet of Maine life, from hourly worker to the U.S. Congress. These hardworking people have a notable history and have been a major force in Maine's development.