Authors: Christina Baker Kline / Phyllis Whitsell / Helen Edwards & Jenny Lee Smith

I did a lot of reading over the past few trips and the themes of the books were very similar.

The Orphan Train

This book came highly recommended from my Goodreads family; thanks to Regan for passing it along. This is a novel that tells the stories of two different, but similar in many ways, generations of orphans. Vivian is 91 years old; as a young child she was put aboard an “orphan train” in New York and was left with a family in the Midwest. Her life was one of servitude and abuse. Molly is an 18-year old who has been in and out of foster homes most of her life. Their two stories are told in parallel when Molly, as a community service sentence, helps Vivian clean out her attic.

Although it is a novel, the story is taken from accounts of actual “orphan trains” that operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating almost 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children.

My Secret Mother

I’d seen this book in a couple of book shops; I tried to borrow it from the library but it wasn’t available locally or from their inter-library loan program. On a shopping trip to a book store in Saskatoon I found it and, since I hadn’t purchased a book in a long time, I treated myself.

Phyllis was adopted by a family when she was a very young child. Although she was told her birth mother had died, she overheard conversations over the years that led her to think otherwise. She wasn’t happy with her adopted family and seemed bitter about it. As an adult she was able to find her birth mother who was an alcoholic and had several related health issues. Phyllis was a district nurse and, although she was stepping beyond the bounds of her area, she was able to see to her mother’s needs for several years. By the time Phyllis was ready to confess her real identity, her mother had severe dementia and was never able to understand that the daughter she had given away was the one caring for her.

My Secret Sister

About the same time as I saw the previous book I also noted this one. And since I was treating myself I bought them both!

This was a much better book than My Secret Mother. Two girls, Helen and Jennifer, were born to the same mother; Jennifer was adopted by a loving family but Helen, who stayed with her birth mother, had a life of hardship and abuse. The story is told from each of their points of view. After they found one another they were happy to know they each had a sister to fill the gap they both felt. But before the book was published DNA tests proved that they were, in fact, twins although Helen’s birth certificate had been forged with a wrong birthdate. When all was settled they found they had several half-siblings between the families of their birth mother and birth father.