Orphan Train Book Report

Christina Baker Kline is an American novelist, editor , and nonfiction writer. She is a graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Horns Fellow in Fiction Writing. In addition to Orphan Train, her novels include, Sweet Water, Bird in Hand, Desire Lines, and The Way Life Should Be. As of yet she hasn’t received any awards.
Kline’s husband, who is a Midwesterner, inspired her to write Orphan Train. The book narrates the real-life story of trains between the mid 1800’s and the early 20th century that abandoned hundreds of thousands of children across the United States. Kline imagines the journey of one such child, Vivian Daly, an Irish immigrant.

Quinn Barret from the website “wisebearmedia.com” firsts states how she thought the author initially made it seem as though that Vivian, who was born Niamh wasn’t Niamh. However it is obvious from the start that the common thread between the elderly Vivian and much younger Niamh, is the shared experience of being orphaned. Quinn believes that Vivian’s story contains more complexity and that the childhood of Niamh was heart wrenching.

I think what Katie meant by it was that children who are “lost” or giving away in the system have a way to find their biological family; something that Vivian/Niamh/Dorothy wasn’t able to do. Katie exclaims that even though Vivian was possibly old enough to remember her birth name, that it must have been traumatic in some way to loose such an important shred of your