Personal Rating: 3.75 Stars Goodreads Rating: 4.13 Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from "aging out" of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse. Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance. The closer Molly grows to Vivian, the more she discovers parallels to her own life. A Penobscot Indian, she, too, is an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. As her emotional barriers begin to crumble, Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life - answers that will ultimately free them both. (goodreads.com) As much as I adore those Little Free Libraries I had never actually taken a book from one. One of the book boxes near me was getting kind of full (stuffed with these crumbling old Westerns and a few odds and ends) so I decided to take one. No, I’d never heard of this one before and I didn’t really have any idea what it was about, but I liked the cover so I grabbed it. What an emotional roller coaster of a book! Goodness, there were so many sad parts. But I love the characters and the story. It was a great read. The main characters, Molly and Vivian, were interesting. I started out wanting to hear Molly’s story only and not caring about the historical drama taking place in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. However, the writing was so good that by the end of it I was totally invested in both character’s lives and the similarities between them. Though, I might have liked the parts with Vivian a bit more by the end. The plot was fantastically woven, though to a person who is used to reading stories about teenagers overthrowing governments it seemed a little boring at first. If you really want to enjoy this book then you have to be ready for a bit of slowness now and then, between the emotionally charged parts. It was an endearing and historically accurate story of a girl, torn from everything she knows first as an immigrant and then as a child on an orphan train. The historical aspects were particularly interesting to me, partially because of the time they took place in. I would have expected a story like this to be a few decades earlier in history and it was interesting to see it happening in the late twenties and to learn about how the orphan trains and the adoptions afterward really worked. I like a bit of learning in my reading from time to time and this book was fascinating. While it was not a book that stood out in any particular way or really blew me away, I did enjoy it and I found it to be an interesting read. It seems like the kind of book you might read for a literature class or for a book club full of people who read much more meaningful works than I do on a regular basis. You know those book clubs, the ones that are welcoming to everyone and read thought provoking books that you never actually thought you’d read, but you ended up liking? I’ve never been to one of those book clubs or any book club really. Come to think of it, I might like to start one someday. It would be a good way to socialize and talk about books. Note to self: consider book club. Anywho, I really did enjoy this read and I do recommend it. However, I feel that I ought to mention that there is a descriptive scene of a child getting molested. There are not many other negative aspects that I can think of in the book, but that was a big one that really shocked me. I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and I saw a slightly different version of this same book in the children’s section. I’m assuming that someone saw that the rest of the book was suitable for children and removed that and other violent or mature parts from the book so you might try looking into that as an option if you want to read this book. TTFN! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15818107-orphan-train?ac=1&from_search=true
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