About
Based on the author's research into her
grandfather's past as an adopted child, and the surprising discovery of his
family of origin and how he came to be adopted, Julia Park Tracey has created a
mesmerizing work of historical fiction illuminating the darkest side of the
Orphan Train.
In 1859, women have few rights, even to their own children. When her
husband dies and her children become wards of a predator, Martha-bereaved and
scared-flees their beloved country home taking the children with her to squalor
of New York City. She manages to find them shelter in a tenement packed with
other down-on-their-luck families and then endeavors to find work as a
seamstress.
But as a naive
woman alone, preyed on by male employers, she soon finds herself nearly
destitute. Her children are hungry with no coal for their fire. Illness lays
them low and Martha begins to lose hope.
The Home for
the Friendless, an aid society, offers free food, clothing, and schooling to
New York's street kids. When a cutpurse takes the last of their money, Martha
reluctantly places her two boys in the Home, keeping daughter Sarah to help
with the baby. Martha takes roommates into her one room, rotating her and
Sarah's bed in shifts with other struggling women.
Finally, faced
with prostitution and homelessness herself, Martha takes Sarah and baby Homer
to the Home for what she thinks is short-term care. When her quarterly visit to
her children is blocked, Martha discovers that the Society has indentured her
two eldest out to work in New York and Illinois via the Orphan Train, and has
placed her two youngest for permanent adoption in Ohio. Stunned at their
loss, Martha begs for her children back, but the Society refuses.
Rather than
succumb-the Civil War erupting around her-Martha sets out to reclaim each of
them.