Orphan Train: A Novel

I decided to read Orphan Train to learn about another ethnic group's immigration experience, as opposed to my Jewish background learned from my grandmother and additional study. Learn, I did as Orphan Train was not what I expected. At times, it was hard to take.There are actually two or three stories in one. Two orphan stories generations apart with some similarities -- “mean mother figures” and passive, mediating “father figures” -- but stark differences. Though, a novel, it is based on historical situations. Author Christina Baker Kline did extensive research and the book is well written.In 2011 Maine, 17-year old Molly, a Penobscot Indian, has been bouncing from foster home to foster home, from school to school, and in and out of trouble. She is caught stealing a poor condition copy of Jane Eyre from the library. Her boyfriend, Jack, says his mother, Terry, is a housekeeper for a 91-year old woman, who needs her attic cleared out. Jack suggests Molly do community service hours helping Vivian clean the attic, thereby avoiding juvie.As the boxes are opened and artifacts looked at, we go back to 1929, when Vivian was nine-year old Niamh Power. Her family emigrated from Ireland to the tenements of New York. Her father continues to be a drunkard; her mother, though she has taught Niamh to sew and mend, is depressed. Niamh takes care of her siblings, mainly baby sister, Maise. A fire leaves Niamh (believed to be) the lone survivor from the family.Now, she finds herself on the “orphan train” run by the Christian Children’s Aid Society. At age 12, my grandmother was the oldest of four orphans that emigrated to New York in 1922. It is fortunate there was a stepsister and her husband here. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened?The train headed west and at different stops the orphans would be marched off and paraded before prospective “parents.” Those not selected would move on to the next stop and the next. Niamh takes care of a baby, Carmine, along the way. When 12-year old Dutchy misbehaves, he is placed in the seat next to Niamh.She is the last of them to be taken, by the Byrnes in Albans, Minnesota. Mrs. Byrne has no intention of making this a family, but changes Niamh’s name to Dorothy by the time they reach the house. In the living room are women and young girls involved in different processes of making clothes. The sweatshop reached Minnesota. Though, the “families” are obligated to send the orphans to school, Mrs. Byrne does not send Dorothy. Like in The Help, the workers must use the outhouse in the yard. Dorothy eats dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Byrne -- he is nicer -- but Dorothy must do the cleaning. Of course, she is not being paid for any of this work. She also sleeps on a cot in the hallway. Remember, she is nine.When the stock market crashes, Mrs. Byrne slowly fires the workers. With Dorothy, she has an out. In comes Mr. Sorenson from Children’s Aid, who drives Dorothy to the Grote’s farm in Heminford County, Minnesota. Flip a coin to see which situation is worse. The Grotes live in a ramshackle house. There are four children. Mrs. Grote doesn’t leave her bed. Mr. Grote doesn’t believe in work so spends most days hunting for food. He doesn’t believe in education, but since he is obligated to send Dorothy, she goes, offering her some respite. Again, she is expected to do the work of a mother, cooking and taking care of the children.What strikes one is there was no way of screening the families when the children are being transported across the country to unknown venues. Seeing “older” boys and girls as free labor rather than children in the family was not uncommon. From 1854-1929, 200,000 children rode the orphan trains. Molly was also in a situation with a mean “mother” and passive, mediating “father,” but it was nowhere near what Niamh/Dorothy went through. These days, with adoptions, there are interviews and home visits. Mr. Sorenson had never visited the Grotes and still left Dorothy there.Eventually, Mrs. Grote tosses Dorothy out in the cold and snow. She makes her way to school. Her teacher, Miss Larsen, takes Dorothy to the women’s rooming house where she lives. The owner, Mrs. Murphy, agrees to take Dorothy in temporarily. For the first time in her life, Dorothy has her own room. Mrs. Murphy learns that the Nielsens, owners of the general store, are looking for help. When the Nielsens visit to meet Dorothy, they say she will be paid an hourly wage to work in the store and will go to the nearby school. Stability comes to her life and eventually, the Nielsens ask if she would mind taking the name of their daughter, who died when she was six -- Vivian. As the years go by, she contributes mightily to the expansion of the store and its success.The history ends around 1943 and we are left wondering what happened between then and 2011. The book alternates between Molly’s home situation and relationship with Vivian in 2011, and Vivian’s early life. Vivian’s story takes on more meaning when Molly has to do a “portaging” assignment for school, “when one leaves home, what does one take with them and what does one leave behind?” Vivian becomes her natural subject. No longer does Molly see visiting Vivian as community service hours.In turn, she begins to open up a whole new world to Vivian, of computers, the Internet and Facebook, leading to a very special ending.An underlying idea is things happen for a reason. If A didn’t happen, then B wouldn’t have happened and C wouldn’t have happened. Even the bad events had to happen in order for the good to happen. Many "orphan train children" were successful. That may have enabled many of these “orphan train children" to survive, but I don’t wish these things to happen to them.

‘Orphan Train’ has been around for several years, and the story is well told by other reviewers. I too, had no idea that this method of distributing unwanted children was in our history. Niamh/Dorothy/Vivian, an immigrant Irish girl is thrust into this system when her parents and siblings are killed in a house fire. The story of her life is paralleled with the story of Molly, a 17-year-old in the foster care system in 2011. The foster care system is a frequent target of books. An imperfect system that needs to be refined and updated desperately. The elephant in the room is that there is no emotional attachment with many foster children, so that when they rebel or screw up it is easy for the ‘parent’ to say “Get out. I don’t want you anymore.” But this system, for all of its problems, is still better than the orphanage system, its predecessor, and a player in this tale. In that system the child was often beaten for infractions much less significant than rebellion. They often had to run away to survive. I thought the characters were not at all shallow or one dimensional. The Byrnes’ were terrible, looking for cheap labor. The Grote’s were even worse, by far. They were in over their head and the husband even admitted that he didn’t know what else to do except to take in Dorothy.Baker-Kline is a great storyteller. She weaves the two story arcs expertly. The ending is satisfying, maybe a little rushed, but I wanted the book to go on for a while longer. Thus, a tiny smudge of disappointment. The author’s moral is hard to miss, that the hardships that we endure help to mold us into who we will become.

This story is very realistic. The only reason I don't give it all five stars is because some authors are incredibly talented at making you feel the fear and tension of a scary and abusive scene without becoming too graphic about it. This has one scene that wasn't 'overly' graphic - but still more than was necessary to get the point across. When I really enjoy a good book, I generally search for more by that author. I won't be searching for any Christina Baker Kline books.

I disliked Orphan Train, because you come to care for her, but there are facts, that are just not believeable, and as a grown up, she acts totally out of her character, and you just do not believe it.After terrible abuse by heartless and half or wholeheartedly crazy persons, she ends up for a short while with an Irish woman, who is all alone in this world, running a small Hotel like establishment.Here she feels at home, she is clearly loved and spoiled by the woman, who is all alone in this world also. Still she sends Vivian on to a family, who is kind to her, but where she never feels at home.I do not believe the psycology of it. An Irish woman, all alone in the world, finds a girl from Ireland on her doorstep, who turns out to be a good little helper, and she turns her out, although she could have been the daughter she does not have, and her comfort as an old woman.But that is not the worst of it. She finds the boy she fell in love with on the train. and marries him.It is total undeluted love, she gets pregnant, and he goes to war, when he cannot avoid it.Her Husband dies in the war, she has their perfect baby, and then she gives it away???????????????Why????????? She does not have to do it. She inherits the foster parents. She has money and a job at her parents shop, and her foster parents will help her to look after the baby.No woman who really loves a man, would ever give away their offspring, and after the experiences she has had her self as a foster child, never feeling she belonged, she would never give her own child away. It is ridiculous.I will nver waste moeny or time on Baker Klines books again. She ia a psycological fraud and frankly, I hate her books.

First thing to say about this book is that I looked the physicality of the "rough cut" edition that I bought. The right side of the book has a rough finish which gives the novel a rustic feel - I'm unsure of the relevance but it does make it look interesting.This is a novel based around events in history of which few people are aware - I certainly expect few UK readers to know much about these train journeys.The author's introduction says that this book is the updated version which she has made more accurate since it's original publication just 4 years previously. As a new reader I can't tell which changes have been made although I'm interested in the updating process.The book has just 290 pages and chapters which move back and forwards from 2011 to the 1920s/1930s.I thought that the language was very beautiful and evocative. The reader is encouraged to see and feel what is happening in the story.At the train stations, the full horror is described in detail as the children line up to be "picked" by potential carers.Whilst the story is very difficult, the novel is really easy to read and I found myself whipping through it within a day.Looking at the world in the 1920s/1930s we see everything through Vivian's eyes - she is perfect as an observer because she is genuinely seeing things for the first time. Her experiences and circumstances are gradually raised but there is so much more for her to learn.The parallels between Vivian and Molly are drawn very clearly and this is at the core of the book. I'm not sure their similarities needed to be quite as obvious as they were (did we need them both to wear jewellery that reminded them of their origins?). They are both intelligent and seemed to always have the strength to raise themselves out of problem situations which marked this book as fiction rather than a true story.Of course the truth is hard to understand nowadays and I think the author has made a good novel which is written in a straight forward and engaging manner.I believed Vivian's character but was not so sure about Molly who went from a grungy teenager to an old lady's carer in just a few chapters. Her transformation was important but could have been less extreme.A lovely book though and I'm happy to have read it.

This book had been on my radar for a while. I was really interested in the subject matter and didn’t actually know about the ‘orphan train’ before I saw this book.I was hooked from the start, this book had me turning the pages fast. The story follows two very different women who find they have a lot more in common than they could have imagined. It switches between the present day and the 1920s/30s and it manages to be horrifying enough to hook you but ultimately uplifting and charming.The story follows Vivian, an orphan and Irish immigrant, as she is boarded onto a train and taken to rural areas of the Midwest where she meets families looking for servants, farm labourers or occasionally just more children, who come and check out the orphans and see if they wanted to take them home. In the present day, Vivian is a 91-year old woman talking through her history with Molly, a young girl in the foster care system that is helping Vivian clear her attic space.As Vivian's story is revealed to Molly, the relationship between the two of them grows. I admit that I felt so much more sympathy for Vivian, though I did understand the importance of Molly's story too. Vivian deals with being constantly unwanted, being underfed, living in a farmhouse without any heating through the winter and the leery eyes of her foster father. I felt sorry for Molly at times, but she was not easy to like, though I still quite enjoyed the insights into her mind.The writing flows and the story develops well. It did seem to get to a point when it suddenly felt a bit more rushed and a lot seemed to happen in a short space of time but this didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. This was a warm and compassionate read about second chances and strength through adversity.

A novel about the Orphan Train movement in the US at the start of the twentieth century, that blends historical and contemporary fiction. Moving back and forth between modern day Spruce Harbor in Maine and New York and the Midwest in the 1920-1930s, Kline ties up the narratives of goth girl Molly, who is aging out of foster care, and Irish orphan Niamh, who rides the Orphan Train to a presumably better life after suffering a family tragedy.While the dual narratives are moving, there is a sense that serendipity is relied on a tad too often to drive the plot forward. The prose is smooth, though unspectacular, and characterisation sometimes lapsing into stereotypes, which are nonetheless varied enough to hold the reader's attention given the number of minor characters who populate the text.On the most part, the novel is not a dud and Kline does spin quite an engaging yarn, but it is when she tries to tackle more sensitive issues about race and ethnicity that the effort seems a little forced, and fizzles out partway in the story, overtaken by the more sensitive personal stories of love and loss that Molly and Niamh experience generations apart.

Absolutely loved this book. It begins with an Irish family emigrating to America in the early twentieth century and tells the story of one of the daughters. I was drawn in almost immediately, desperate for her to have a happy life. This is told alongside the present day life of a teenager who is an important but relatively small part of the book.I knew nothing about the orphan trains before reading this book so I learnt something too - always a bonus for me.It's one of those books that will stay with me for a long time.