In 1928, ten-year-old Lenvil O'Loughlin and his two younger brothers are picked up off the squalid streets of New York City and put on an orphan train headed west. Scared and fearful of what the future holds, Lenvil only hopes the three of them can stay together. When the train screeches to a halt in Lebanon, Missouri, Lenvil's brothers are selected by a childless couple. However, Lenvil is left to agonize over the separation and is put back on the train to go farther west. In Springfield, he is taken by Eldon Detherage, a cruel taskmaster who wants a boy for no other reason than to work on his farm. Fortunately, Lenvil has a champion in Eldon's wife, Velma, who treats him with the kindness he desperately needs. As the impact of the Great Depression spreads, everyone is struggling just to survive. As the years pass, Lenvil copes with the hardships of life on the farm as best he can, but he also makes himself a promise: someday he will find his brothers and make a better life for them all.

In 1928, ten-year-old Lenvil OLoughlin and his two younger brothers are picked up off the squalid streets of New York City and put on an orphan train headed west. Scared and fearful of what the future holds, Lenvil only hopes the three of them can stay together. When the train screeches to a halt in Lebanon, Missouri, Lenvils brothers are selected by a childless couple. However, Lenvil is left to agonize over the separation and is put back on the train to go farther west. In Springfield, he is taken by Eldon Detherage, a cruel taskmaster who wants a boy for no other reason than to work on his farm. Fortunately, Lenvil has a champion in Eldons wife, Velma, who treats him with the kindness he desperately needs. As the impact of the Great Depression spreads, everyone is struggling just to survive. As the years pass, Lenvil copes with the hardships of life on the farm as best he can, but he also makes himself a promise: someday he will find his brothers and make a better life for them all.

The true story behind Christina Baker Kline’s bestselling novel is revealed in this “engaging and thoughtful history” of the Children’s Aid Society (Los Angeles Times). A powerful blend of history, biography, and adventure, Orphan Trains fills a grievous gap in the American story. Tracing the evolution of the Children’s Aid Society, this dramatic narrative tells the fascinating tale of one of the most famous—and sometimes infamous—child welfare programs: the orphan trains, which spirited away some two hundred fifty thousand abandoned children into the homes of rural families in the Midwest. In mid-nineteenth-century New York, vagrant children, whether orphans or runaways, filled the streets. The city’s solution for years had been to sweep these children into prisons or almshouses. But a young minister named Charles Loring Brace took a different tack. With the creation of the Children’s Aid Society in 1853, he provided homeless youngsters with shelter, education, and, for many, a new family out west. The family matching process was haphazard, to say the least: at town meetings, farming families took their pick of the orphan train riders. Some children, such as James Brady, who became governor of Alaska, found loving homes, while others, such as Charley Miller, who shot two boys on a train in Wyoming, saw no end to their misery. Complete with extraordinary photographs and deeply moving stories, Orphan Trains gives invaluable insights into a creative genius whose pioneering, if controversial, efforts inform child rescue work today.

"This man is confused. Home is on the other side of the world, back in Boston. How could this be home? He was just going to Dakota and back. Tom said it on the train. The Sister promised he wasn't going to stay here forever--just help with the farm work. But they lied. Tom and he had the same tags on their jackets, and Tom was gone. In 1877 John was born to Irish immigrants in South Boston. He has an older brother and younger sister. But after his mother's death, when John was age four, he spent several years in the Home for Catholic Destitute Children. Now he is to work as indentured servant until adulthood." --P. [4] of cover.

"From 1850 to 1930 America witnessed a unique emigration and resettlement of at least 200,000 children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This 'placing out,' an attempt to find homes for the urban poor, was best known by the 'orphan trains' that carried the children. Holt carefully analyzes the system, initially instituted by the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853, tracking its imitators as well as the reasons for its creation and demise. She captures the children's perspective with the judicious use of oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts. This well-written volume sheds new light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion. It is good, scholarly social history."—Library Journal

This young readers’ edition of Christina Baker Kline’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train follows a twelve-year-old foster girl who forms an unlikely bond with a ninety-one-year-old woman. Adapted and condensed for a young audience, Orphan Train Girl includes an author’s note and archival photos from the orphan train era. This book is especially perfect for mother/daughter reading groups. Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it’s her attitude that’s the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she’s had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly’s forced to help an a wealthy elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. But from the moment they meet, Molly realizes that Vivian isn’t like any of the adults she’s encountered before. Vivian asks Molly questions about her life and actually listens to the answers. Soon Molly sees they have more in common than she thought. Vivian was once an orphan, too—an Irish immigrant to New York City who was put on a so-called "orphan train" to the Midwest with hundreds of other children—and she can understand, better than anyone else, the emotional binds that have been making Molly’s life so hard. Together, they not only clear boxes of past mementos from Vivian’s attic, but forge a path of friendship, forgiveness, and new beginnings.