Excellent

Wow!! I just finished this wonderful book. Found it very hard to put down but I guess it was necessary to sleep and eat so I managed to break away. The story is very engrossing and is also very moving. I've tried to recommend the book to all my friends but it turns out that everyone I know has already read it. Guess I'm just a late bloomer but I'll be looking into her other books now.

Very good read of history of orphans in American history

Excellent quick read! Captivating too

At first I did not like the jumping back and forth from the past to the present. However, the author did an excellent job of blending the stories together. Life as an orphan from Ireland and yet as a nine year old child is heart wrenching. Thought of as a street urchin, thief, dirty and worthless is heart breaking. Like any child who wants love and approval from family she was welling to become a slave to those who never returned that love. So many questions to be answered and thankfully the author answers many of them as the story progresses.

This book was the topic of a lot of book clubs and I picked it up to see what all the talk was about. I was not disappointed. I knew nothing about the history of the "orphan trains" in the United States. The story flows simultaneously with Molly, a 17 year old modern day orphan in the system and 91 year old Vivian, an elderly widow with a story of her own. The reader follows their stories and the more you find out about the past, the more you love them both. If you love historical fiction and a book that makes you want to learn more, then this book is for you. I loved it and spent time afterwards researching the orphan train history.

I'm glad that what happened to orphans during this period gains increasing attention and remembrance through historical novels. I enjoyed this one, and how it wove the parallel stories together.

I really liked the one story line, but the other (modern) one felt trite. I wanted to skip the chapters about Molly and go straight to the Vivian goodness. I'm sure their stories eventually overlap and intertwine better (I imagine through them getting to know each other and telling their stories) but I got bored of/annoyed with the flat Molly story too quickly to get to that point. Wish I could just skip over her chapters and still read a complete book! Ultimately didn't finish it because the book was due to be returned and it didn't grab me, but if you put it in front of me with no time limit I would probably keep going.

Good for CASA volunteers

Returning for long wait list - will try later.