Orphan Train written by Christina Baker Kline Molly isn't getting along with her foster parents. Sure, they are nice enough, but to her they are just another house she will pass through. She suspects her time there is running out. Stealing that book was probaly the last straw, and if she has to go to juvy they will send her away. She's too diffficult. She's not worth it. Her only way out of juvy is to do fifty hours of comunity service by cleaning out this lady's attic. Vivian Daly, is as old as dirt, but if spending fifty hours with her will keep Molly out of juvy, she has no choice. Molly combs back her skunk stripped hair, tones down her dark eyeliner, and take out her nose ring, so she doesn't scare the old lady. At seventeen years old Molly doesn't think she has anything in common with this rich old women, but as they organize Vivian's stored memories, an unexpected friendship is also found among the boxes. As Molly and Vivian unearth forgotten items from Vivian's past they discover that they have more in commen than they thought. Through flashbacks, Vivian's colorful past is illuminated primarily focusing on her experiances involving the orphan train as a ten year old. From 1848 to 1929 children left without parents to care for them were shipped west on trains to find families to adopt them. Run primarily by Children's Aid, the trains stopped at major cities where the children would be presented like cattle. Some of them are adopted and raised as their adoptive parents own child. Others weren't as lucky. Like the book's main protaginist, Vivian Daly, is first adopted by people who simply need free labor for their sewing buisness. The hope of Children's Aid is to find the children a house they can stay at untill they are eighteen. Vivian, however, moves from house to house due to things like the Great Depression, abusive housholds, and wartimes.
This book should simply be called "Orphan" because this charming story is less about the train and more about the very different life of being an orphan. Through both contemperary and historical fiction. The two seemingly different characters, Molly and Vivian are linked because they are both orphans. Kline has succeeded in creating well-rounded characters that make the reader believe that one girl came from 2011 while she plucked the other from the year 1929. With careful weavings of past and present this story will sweep you away. Orphan Train shows how being an orphan might be handled slightly differently now, but the emotion and struggles remains constant whether a person is an orphan in 1929 or 2011.
