Orphan Train

This is a different cover for ISBN 9780061950728, which can be obtained here.

The 91-year-old woman with a secret past as an orphan train rider and the teenage girl whose own difficult upbringing drives her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask are the subjects of the author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be, who presents her most ambitious and potent work to date.

Molly Ayer, who is almost eighteen, understands she only has this one opportunity. The only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse is a community service job helping an elderly lady clean up her house. She is just months away from "ageing out" of the child welfare system and on the verge of getting booted out of her foster family.

Vivian Daly has had a tranquil existence on the Maine shore. However, there are traces of a stormy history stashed away in trunks in her attic. Molly finds that she and Vivian aren't as dissimilar as they first seem to be when she assists Vivian in going through her belongings and memories. Vivian, a young Irish immigrant who was left an orphan in New York City, boarded a train headed for the Midwest along with hundreds of other kids whose futures were left to fate and chance.

Molly finds more and more similarities between Vivian's life and her own as they get closer. She is a Penobscot Indian, raised by strangers, and she too has unresolved concerns about her background. Molly finds that she can assist Vivian in solving mysteries that have plagued her all of her life—mysteries that will finally set them both free—as her emotional walls start to come down.

Orphan Train is a compelling book about adversity and resiliency, second chances, unexpected companionship, and the secrets we conceal that prevent us from knowing who we are. It is rich in detail and expansive in scale.