Hop On Board the Orphan Train

Orphan Train 
by 
Christina Baker Kline
















Get on board the orphan train and travel to a different place and time where two girls who are separated by decades and yet find out their lives are no different at all in this novel Orphan Train by Christine Baker Kline.

I was captivated by this book right from the beginning.  Kline starts the book with a prologue of a woman speaking.  All we know is that she is ninety years old and endured many hardships in life.  From that moment, you need to find out who this woman is and what she went through all these years that she lived.  It was hard to put the book down with such a powerful opening.

Molly is a seventeen year old girl who meets Vivian while she's cleaning out her attic as part of her community service.  Being placed in foster home after foster home, Molly finds herself in trouble after stealing a book from the local library.  When she goes to meet Vivian for the first time, she doesn't realize she is meeting a woman who had a life very similar to hers while growing up.

Kline's style of writing to parallell the lives of two women who lived in different eras but lived lives pretty much the same was nicely done.  Going back and forth between the two decades was done at the perfect moment and never left one confused while reading.  I enjoyed the parts when it was Vivian's part of view talking.  To me, it seemed more interesting hearing about her life on the orphan train and how she was sent family to family until she found the one couple who loved her as their own daughter.  While the present day parts of Molly's life were written well, it just didn't hit me as much as the parts about Vivian's life.  Kline really knew how to get one to care and feel sorrow for Vivian once we found out all she went through in her life.  The first family who took her in made her into a worker, not a daughter.  The second family was horrible to begin with and never cared about her at all.  I would have to say that Vivian was my favorite character in this book because after all she went through, many ghosts from her past that haunted her to the present day, she still rose above it all.  

The parts of the book that I couldn't stand were when Vivian lived with the second family, The Grotes, and Dina, Molly's foster mother, who thought Molly was no good and that she herself should have everything her way.  The Grotes were atrocious and Kline did a fine job in detail just to show how horrible they were.  Neither cared for Vivian and it was scene how much hatred the wife had for her the day she kicked her out of the house for the husband assaulting Vivian, blaming her for it happening.  Meanwhile, Molly was living with Dina as a foster mother, a woman who could care less about anyone else but herself.  She too, kicks Molly out of the house for no reason at all, except for the fact that she didn't like her to begin with.  

I feel that Kline wanted the readers not to like these characters at all, though there were others who was horrible, these three were the absolute worse.  Bringing them into the story, made us feel more for Vivian and Molly.  There were times I just wanted to yell at them for being so mean to two girls who just wanted a family to love them.

I rated this book 5 out of 5 stars with the fact alone I couldn't stop reading the book.  Kline did her research on what the orphan train was really like to add to the story, making it feel that we were really there with Vivian.  At times I forgot this was a novel and thought I was reading about the real orphan train.  It was a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

Closing:

I hope you enjoyed reading this review and look forward to any comments you may have and would love to discuss this book with anyone.  And stay tuned for my upcoming book reviews on these books:
The Rebel Heir by Elizabeth Michels
The Cross and the Dragon by Kim Rendfeld
The After Party by Jana Prikryl

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