Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Summary: Foster kid Molly Ayer find herself in some trouble when she steals a book from the library.  Her foster mom is already trying to get rid of her and now she is faced with community service hours to make up for her theft.  Thanks to her boyfriend, she finds a job with an older lady Vivian Daly.  As she helps Vivian sorts through boxes in her attic, she discovers that she isn't the only one with baggage.  Will she be able to work through her troubles?  What secrets does Vivian's attic hold?

Impression: (adult read)  I really loved this book.  Set in the mid-nineteenth century during the time the orphan trains ran from the northeast to the midwest, this is great for those who enjoy historical fiction.  I think Kline does a great job with character development and weaves together a beautiful story of two young women who are dealt with a hard life and are trying to make it through.  This is one I could reread!

Reviews: 

A long journey from home and the struggle to find it again form the heart of the intertwined stories that make up this moving novel. Foster teen Molly is performing community-service work for elderly widow Vivian, and as they go through Vivian’s cluttered attic, they discover that their lives have much in common. When Vivian was a girl, she was taken to a new life on an orphan train. These trains carried children to adoptive families for 75 years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the Great Depression. Novelist Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009) brings Vivian’s hardscrabble existence in ­Depression-era Minnesota to stunning life. Molly’s present-day story in Maine seems to pale in comparison, but as we listen to the two characters talk, we find grace and power in both of these seemingly disparate lives. Although the girls are vulnerable, left to the whims of strangers, they show courage and resourcefulness. Kline illuminates a largely hidden chapter of American history, while portraying the coming-of-age of two resilient young women.

Orphan Train. Rev. of Orphan Train by Christina Baker Cline. Booklist. Vol. 109, No. 14. 15 March 2013. Web. 10 July 2016.

Kirkus Reviews (February 1, 2013)

Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009, etc.) draws a dramatic, emotional story from a neglected corner of American history. Molly is a troubled teen, a foster child bounced from one unsuitable home to another. Vivian is a wealthy 91-year-old widow, settled in a Victorian mansion on the Maine seashore. But Vivian's story has much in common with Molly's. Vivian Daly, born Niamh Power, has gone "from cobblestoned village on the coast of Ireland to a tenement in New York to a train filled with children, steaming westward through farmland, to a lifetime in Minnesota." Vivian's journey west was aboard an "Orphan Train," a bit of misguided 1900s-era social engineering moving homeless, destitute city children, mostly immigrants, into Midwest families. Vivian's journey wasn't entirely happy. She was deposited with the Byrnes, who wanted only child labor in a dressmaking enterprise. Then, as the Great Depression began, Vivian was dumped into the Grote household, where she suffered neglect and abuse. Only after the intervention of a kind teacher did Vivian find a home with a decent, loving family. The story unfolds through chapters set in the present day, with Molly, caught in a minor theft, forced into community service work and agreeing to help Vivian clean an attic. Other chapters flash back to the period from 1929 through World War II. In those decades, Vivian travels West, endures the Byrnes and Grotes, finds a loving home with the Nielsens, reconnects with Dutchy, another orphan-train refugee, marries and is widowed when Dutchy dies in the war. Molly's life story unfolds in parallel--a neglected half--Native American child, whose father was an accident victim and whose mother drowned in drugs and crime--and Molly slowly opens up to Vivian. Kline does a superb job in connecting goth-girl Molly, emotionally damaged by the "toll [of] years of judgment and criticism," to Vivian, who sees her troubled childhood reflected in angry Molly. The realistic narrative follows characters as they change and grow, making a poignant revelation 

Orphan Train. Rev. of Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. Kirkus Reviews. 1 February 2013. Web. 10 July 2016.