Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline on April 2, 2013
Genres: Fiction / Coming of Age, Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Literary
Pages: 400
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Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline had been on my TBR for a long time. We read this for book club. This was a very touching story. If you like historical fiction this one is for you.
Families looking for servants, farm labourers, or occasionally more children would come check out the orphans and see if they wanted to take them home. In this book, Vivian is an orphaned Irish immigrant at just nine years old, and she finds herself on one of the orphan trains. They were plucked from their dire circumstance and sent on a train to a new life, or so they thought. The 1920-30s part of this book tells the story of her life, being moved from one family to the next in Minnesota.
In the present, is Molly’s story and a 91 year-old woman with an attic full of painful memories. Molly finds herself in the foster care system, aware that her current family merely keeps her for the additional financial support. She rebels persistently, challenging conventions through her appearance, demeanor, and ultimately, by pilfering a book from the nearby library, resulting in a sentence of community service. This obligation leads her to assist an elderly woman in decluttering her attic.
This was one of those great historical fictions that was informative and about a part of history that I never really knew about. I was surprised how much I liked this story and liked the ending. If you like learning about pieces of history that you didn’t learn in school this is for you.