Molly’s life story unfolds in parallel-a neglected half–Native American child, whose father was an accident victim and whose mother drowned in drugs and crime-and Molly slowly opens up to Vivian. In those decades, Vivian travels West, endures the Byrnes and Grotes, finds a loving home with the Nielsens, reconnects with Dutchy, another orphan-train refugee, marries and is widowed when Dutchy dies in the war.
Other chapters flash back to the period from 1929 through World War II. The story unfolds through chapters set in the present day, with Molly, caught in a minor theft, forced into community service work and agreeing to help Vivian clean an attic. Only after the intervention of a kind teacher did Vivian find a home with a decent, loving family. Then, as the Great Depression began, Vivian was dumped into the Grote household, where she suffered neglect and abuse. She was deposited with the Byrnes, who wanted only child labor in a dressmaking enterprise. Vivian Daly, born Niamh Power, has gone "from cobblestoned village on the coast of Ireland to a tenement in New York to a train filled with children, steaming westward through farmland, to a lifetime in Minnesota." Vivian’s journey west was aboard an "Orphan Train," a bit of misguided 1900s-era social engineering moving homeless, destitute city children, mostly immigrants, into Midwest families. But Vivian’s story has much in common with Molly’s. Vivian is a wealthy 91-year-old widow, settled in a Victorian mansion on the Maine seashore. Molly is a troubled teen, a foster child bounced from one unsuitable home to another. Kline ( Bird in Hand, 2009, etc.) draws a dramatic, emotional story from a neglected corner of American history.
0 kommentar(er)
