Monday, July 25, 2016

Orphan Train - Christina Baker Kline

I have been on a non-fiction kick lately (and not updating the blog, clearly), but I took a break from that endeavor to read this book - which I've been hearing about since last year and was handed to me by my mother-in-law.  Orphan Train explores the unlikely friendship between a disgruntled teen foster youth, and an elderly wealthy woman.  As the book explores the parallels between the lives of the two women, it switches back and forth from the present to the life of the elderly woman who traveled on the orphan trains from New York across the midwest to find "suitable" homes for orphaned and abandoned immigrant children.  This was a quick read -  I read it in one sitting on a plane from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. - and I ended it in tears (not at all embarrassing on a very public plane ride!).  This reminded me of the fiction I love to read - stories about women, coming of age stories, and stories of unlikely friendships and connections.