Orphan Train Themes & Location

Your books explore the “legacy of trauma.” Talk about how trauma contributes to our life’s story. In other words, how does trauma define our lives? And is there the possibility to love and live again after trauma?

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear. In Orphan Train, I wanted to write about how traumatic events beyond our control can shape and define our lives. “”People who cross the threshold between the known world and that place where the impossible does happen discover the problem of how to convey that experience,”” the novelist Kathryn Harrison wrote. Many train riders were ashamed of this part of their past, and carried the secret of it for decades, and sometimes until they died. Over the course of Orphan Train Vivian moves from shame about her past to acceptance, eventually coming to terms with what she’s been through. In the process she learns about the regenerative power of claiming — and telling — one’s life story. Perhaps the main message of my novel is that shame and secrecy can keep us from becoming our full selves. It’s not until we speak up that we can move past the pain and step forward. And yes — you can learn to love and live again.

I also explore the fallout of traumatic events. I was initially attracted to the idea of trauma narratives after experiencing a particular personal trauma. I can say that the trauma prompted another life course, but I’m not sure it defined me. I’m still exploring that through therapy and time. What attracted you to writing about trauma? Do you consider trauma an illusion? Does it have to control us? As a novelist I have always been interested in how people come to terms with difficult, life-altering events. I am intrigued by the spaces between words, the silences that conceal long-kept secrets, the complexities that lie beneath the surface. How do people tell the stories of their lives and what do those stories reveal, intentionally or not, about who they are? I don’t think that trauma is an illusion; there is no question in my mind that circumstances beyond our control can shape and define us. But ultimately we make choices about letting ourselves be defined by our pasts.

You mention rootlessness being a major theme of the book, which seems a result or symptom of being an orphan. Do you agree? Does one have to experience abandonment to feel a sense of rootlessness?

Many people, for many reasons, feel rootless — but orphans and abandoned or abused children have particular cause. I think I was drawn to the orphan train story in part because two of my own grandparents were orphans who spoke little about their early lives. My own background is partly Irish, and so I decided that I wanted to write about an Irish girl who has kept silent about the circumstances that led her to the orphan train.

Can you talk about the presence of time in this book, the way you use it to define and expand? Why the choice of present tense, especially in the sections that take place in the past?

The train rider’s story needed to be fresh and immediate and direct, almost cinematic. I was determined that it not seem romanticized or sepia-toned. The conceit is that the train rider is telling her story to the central character of the third-person narrative; in telling her story, she relives it. For a long time, these stories run parallel. Eventually it becomes clear that the train rider’s story is unfolding in “real time,” and the present-day story both influences and is influenced by its telling. I wanted people to experience Vivian’s story as if it were happening today.

The present-day story in Orphan Train unfolds over several months and the historical section spans 23 years, from 1929 to 1943. It took some time to figure out how to balance the sections so that they complemented and enhanced each other. Too often, when I’m reading novels with separate storylines, I find that I prefer one over the other and am impatient to return to the one I like. I tried to avoid this with Orphan Train by weaving the stories together so that they contained echoes of and references to each other – that, for example, Vivian’s grandmother would give her a Claddagh necklace in one section, and Molly would comment on the necklace in the present-day story pages later. But I didn’t want the references to be too literal or overt. It was complicated! I also wanted the historical section to end abruptly with a surprising revelation, and for the present-day story to pick up where it left off, laying bare the mechanics of the storytelling: that Vivian is telling Molly her story in the present day. Sometimes I gave myself a headache trying to figure out how it all fit together. More than once, my editor, thank goodness, came in and saved the day.

Did you go to the Midwest to see any of the sites you describe here?

I’ve been going to Minnesota and North Dakota for decades. I know Minneapolis fairly well and feel a great affinity for the region. My husband’s family has a lake home near Park Rapids, MN, and I’ve spent a lot of time there. Several of the small towns I describe in this novel are invented, as is Spruce Harbor, Maine, the setting for the present-day story. (Spruce Harbor is also the setting for another of my novels, The Way Life Should Be.) Planting an imaginary town in a real landscape gives me freedom as a writer to invent as I go.

Did situations like the Grotes’ home really exist?

Sadly, yes, there were many stories similar to Vivian’s (Dorothy’s) experience with the Grotes: going into a home that has no running water, is in the middle of the woods, with neglectful parents, etc. In fact, I came across an article I use in my slideshow (from the Washington Post in 1905) which is about immigrants on the plains of North Dakota taking train riders into sod huts and mistreating them terribly. It says, “children sent out from Eastern cities are doomed to drudgery which will amount to serfdom.” At the same time, some children had very happy experiences. The bottom line is this: there was no screening process for people who took in the children.

All of the sections of Orphan Train set in present day take place in a fictional Maine town on Mount Desert Island called Spruce Harbor, which you also used as a setting for your earlier novel, The Way Life Should Be. Why did you decide on that approach?

William Faulkner was probably the greatest influence on me because of the way he thought about the world he created. I went to his studio in Oxford, Mississippi, and saw the way that he had mapped out the town — he wrote all over his wall — and his stories. I wanted to write about Mount Desert Island because so much of my family lives there now, but I realized that I would have a lot more freedom if I created a fictional town.

Is Spruce Harbor just Southwest Harbor masquerading under another name?

I decided that if I wrote about Southwest Harbor explicitly that it could be a little bit presumptuous. I almost felt I would have to be living there full time to do that. My novel Desire Lines (1998) was set in Bangor, but I knew Bangor so well; it’s where I grew up, so I felt I was entitled to write about it. And I wanted some freedom geographically. I wanted a coffee shop that would be in a certain place where there isn’t a coffee shop in Southwest Harbor. In my mind, Spruce Harbor is sort of like Platform 9 3/4 in the Harry Potter books, which operates in between places that are real. So Spruce Harbor is my mythical little sliver of a place between the actual places. Emotionally, it gives me this little place that is only mine.

In this novel, as in other publications of yours, you reference real family history. What are the challenges of drawing on the actual to create the fictional?

Generally, I feel a lot of freedom in writing fiction. Memoir is much harder, I think, in terms of worrying about accuracy and being sensitive to others’ feelings. But I did feel a sense of responsibility to the train riders and their descendants to be as accurate as possible about the history; I knew it would matter a great deal to them.

You span many years in this novel. What helped you keep track of the time and the alternating stories? Lists? Storyboards? What’s the process?

I jumped around a bit with the present-day story, but I wrote the historical section chronologically. While I wrote the first draft, I didn’t worry too much about structure – I just wanted to tell the stories. The greatest challenge was finding a way to link the story arcs of the two main characters; it took some time to figure out how to balance the sections so that they fit together seamlessly. (I don’t outline before I start a novel, but I do create and revise out- lines, lists and storyboards as I go.)

Your book has an ethical soul to it. But it’s not preachy. How did you avoid being didactic?

Ruthless editing. As I revised this novel, I kept returning to Raymond Carver’s collection Where I’m Calling From. I learned more from reading these stories (edited by Gordon Lish) than I did from years of writing classes about showing versus telling, the well-chosen detail and how to expunge unearned emotion: the sentimental, the false, the twee. No doubt some remains, but I got most of it I think.

There have been other books about the orphan trains. Why this one?

I think it attracts a broad readership, from teens to old people to history buffs (way beyond my usual “women 30-60” demographic). It appeals to book clubs because there’s a lot to digest and discuss. People tell me they identify closely and strongly with one or the other of the main characters. And this book was more ambitious (a true historical event, a broader canvas) than my previous novels. But knowing – or thinking I know – what works in this novel is no guarantee for the next. I hope people like my next book, too, but I don’t expect anything like this to happen again.

Do you have a newfound perspective on “orphans” today who are in foster care? How so?

The profound realization I came to when writing this book is that the problem of unwanted, disenfranchised, neglected, and abused children will never go away, no matter how many social programs we develop. Don’t get me wrong – it’s important to have checks and balances, caring social workers, and laws to protect children. But the pain of abandonment that children in foster care experience today is the same pain that children felt when they rode the orphan trains. The emotions are the same.

Life of orphan children has improved nowadays, but the trauma of foster homes and foster families is still present, the feeling of nothingness still remains. If you could influence in the political or social regulation now a days, what would you do?

The profound realization I came to when writing this book is that the problem of unwanted, disenfranchised, neglected, and abused children will never go away, no matter how many social programs we develop. Don’t get me wrong – it’s vitally important to have checks and balances, caring social workers, and laws to protect children. I work with foster-care agencies in my community that are at the forefront of change for the better. But the pain of abandonment that children in foster care experience today is the same pain that children felt when they rode the orphan trains. The emotions are the same.

We see trains today all over Europe, with refugees from the Middle East, so this story never stops to repeat itself, doesn’t it?

I think this is why the foreign rights to Orphan Train have sold in nearly 40 countries. Most countries have their own version of this story somewhere in their histories (and even today).

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