Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline was one of the book selections last month for the reading group to which I belong. (We always have at least 2 choices a month.) Everyone who read it, really liked this novel which is based on the social welfare program that relocated orphaned and unwanted children from Eastern cities to families, mostly in the rural Midwest. Approximately 250,000 children were sent on trains - sometimes in conditions not much better than those on cattle cars - which would stop off in towns where the children would be marched out for the locals to inspect. Kline tells the fictional story of Vivian Daly, a young Irish immigrant sent west from New York City in the hope of finding of family who would adopt her. Many such children found loving homes, but many also were treated as indentured servants or otherwise abused, separated from their siblings and with no one to turn to for help. Orphan Train is a depiction of  hardships, but also of second chances and of coming to grips with one's life. After surviving and growing up, Daly returns east where later in life she is assisted by Molly Ayers, a teenager who herself has been in and out of foster care, enabling the two women to come to a mutual understanding of their lives.
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