The Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline (3.5)
The background to this story is very interesting – the thousands of orphans from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s who were brought by train from the east coast to the Midwest to be fostered and hopefully adopted. Not surprising, many became basically indentured servants on farms. The author did a lot of research and followed the life of one possible orphan. She managed to balance the reality of the time without it becoming too maudlin. My biggest quibble with this book is how fast it wrapped up. The timeline felt off. 100’s of pages covering late childhood to early adulthood and then in one chapter it was brought up to date.
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