The “Open Afternoon Book Club” will hold its next meeting in the Story Garden Room on Wednesday, June 15th, at 1:00 pm. The group will discuss Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train: “a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship” (http://christinabakerkline.com/).
In her New York Times Bestseller, Kline takes the reader from contemporary Maine to Depression-era Minnesota, weaving the stories of Molly, a troubled young Penobscot Indian, and Vivian, a 91-year-old wealthy retiree with a hidden past. The chapters move between the women’s modern-day lives and Vivian’s turbulent youth.
Vivian Daly’s childhood is marked by poverty, loss, and loneliness. The Irish immigrant, born Niamh Power, is tragically orphaned in 1929 during a New York City tenement fire. She is sent to the Children’s Aid Society and shipped to rural Minnesota aboard an “orphan train.” Her future, like those of her fellow passengers, is to be largely determined by luck. Relocated from place to place and from family to family, Vivian continually faces hardship, hatred, and abuse.
At the age of seventeen, Molly Ayer finds herself dangerously close to “aging out” of the foster care system. In a last-ditch effort to avoid juvenile hall, she takes on a community service position helping the aged Vivian to clean out her attic. As they dig through boxes and memorabilia and begin to learn about each other’s pasts, the women discover that their core similarities outweigh their differences. Through the power of friendship and shared experience, the women confront the demons of their pasts and help to set each other free.
Kline’s poignant novel is based on a forgotten chapter of American history. The Orphan Train Movement was a welfare program that transported orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children from eastern cities to foster homes in the rural Midwest. Between 1854 and 1929 the orphan trains relocated approximately 200,000 children.
Books are available at the circulation desk.
All events at the Cazenovia Public Library are free and open to the public. For more information on the “Open Afternoon Book Club” or other events at the Library, call 655-9322 or visit www.cazenoviapubliclibrary.org.