Molly learns that Vivian was herself an orphan, an Irish immigrant in New York who was put on the Orphan Train in the late 1920s and tossed from home to home in Minnesota. When she's caught stealing a copy of Jane Eyre from the library, in an effort to keep the peace with her stressed foster parents, she ends up cleaning out elderly Vivian Daly's attic. Seventeen-year-old Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer has spent most of her life in foster care. Kline's absorbing new novel (after Bird in the Hand) is a heartfelt page-turner about two women finding a sense of home. Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, and unexpected friendship.
A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they appear. Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude?Īs a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away.
Beautiful.”-Ann Packerīetween 18, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck.
“A lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of America’s history. Now featuring a sneak peek at Christina's forthcoming novel The Exiles, coming August 2020.