A new book on Canada’s famous “Dionne Quintuplets” suggests the quints were born premature and tiny, but fame was the real problem.

Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie and Marie were real children, but in her new book “The Miracle and Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuiplets,” Sarah Miller concludes, that through a series of mostly good intentions, the girls ended up being exploited for popular culture.

The quints were born near North Bay, Ontario in 1934,  With birth weighs ranging from 1.7 lbs to 3.4 lbs they weren’t expected to live.

The books uses archival material to examine how the miracle of the quints’ survival morphed into a spectacle that forever altered the lives of the little girls.