Orphan Train

I have been on a long non-fiction bender this fall, and have been looking for a good fiction read, when one of my colleagues recommended Orphan Train. It's premise is that Niamh Power is nine years old when she is orphaned and sent west by a children's aid society to a new life in Minnesota. (These orphan trains were real and Christina Baker Kline is not the first to mine them for material in the shaping of a protagonist. The trauma of the orphan train was a critical component of Madame X in My Notorious Life, too.)  

Orphan Train is Niamh-cum-Dorothy-cum-Vivian's story, intertwined with that of foster child Molly Ayer, who meets Vivian in unlikely circumstances when the former is 17 and the latter is 91. Despite their differences in age and position, Vivian and Molly discover they have much in common and form a deep bond.

As I've noted before (such as in my review of Sandcastle Girls), parallel narratives are difficult to carry off and can sometimes detract from a story more than add to it.  Kline, however, pulls off her double narratives beautifully, with rich characters and histories for both Molly and Vivian. This is especially impressive because Kline does all of this in well under 300 pages - as compared to Villa Triste, whose Lucretia Grindle accomplishes the same feat, but in some 640 pages.

I truly enjoyed all aspects of this book at Kline's writing. She crafted a rich and interesting story without feeling the need to wrap everything up in a neat, tidy package in the final pages.

Four stars.