Orphan Train Book Idea

Orphan Train origin story

Sometimes the seeds for a novel are planted in the most unexpected soil. In the case of Orphan Train, that soil was in North Dakota — under about four feet of snow.

Visiting my mother-in-law in Fargo, North Dakota, for a week with my husband and three young sons, we woke up one morning in the dark, the windows blanketed with snow. The boys shrieked, threw on ski pants, and ran outside to make snow angels and igloo tunnels, but after a few minutes they trudged back inside, icicles dripping from their noses and boots full of slush. As the snowfall grew heavier we watched the cars in the driveway disappear, along with any dreams we might have had of going sledding or shopping.

There was no escape: we were housebound. On the second day, after several interminable games of Sorry with my younger two boys, I escaped to find their bookish older brother, Hayden, on his stomach in the living room, leafing through a publication I’d never seen before. Called “Century of Stories,” it was a celebration of Jamestown, ND’s centennial in 1983, filled with articles and photographs. “Hayden, there’s a story in there about my dad, your great-grandfather, that might interest you,” my mother-in-law, Carole, was saying. I knew that Carole had grown up in Jamestown and that her father, a taciturn and somewhat aloof man, had been president of the local bank – but that was all. So it was quite a surprise to read the article about him, “They called it ‘Orphan Train’: And it proved there was a home for many children on the prairie.”

This story stunned me, and led me to the Internet and the library to do research. In all my years of schooling I’d never heard about the 200,000 poor, orphaned, and abandoned city children who were sent on trains to the Midwest from the East Coast between 1854 and 1929. I didn’t know that the Methodist minister who concocted this idea, Charles Loring Brace, conceived of it as a way to get underage criminals and vagrants off the crowded streets of New York, and provide free labor (along with a strong dose of Christian values) to poor farmers in the sparsely populated heartland. I didn’t know that most of these children believed the train they were on was the only one, and that it wasn’t until the 1960s – usually at the urging of their own children – that they began to tell their stories.

I was hooked. Over the next few years I read hundreds of nonfiction narratives and talked to half a dozen of the few remaining “train riders,” as they call themselves, all between the ages of 90 and 100. These older people, and their hard-won perspective, fascinated me as much as their stories did, each one of which contained its own alchemy of heartbreak and grace. I soon realized that I’d found the focus for my next novel.

Every detail this book is rooted in history, but Vivian – the train rider in my novel – goes on a journey that is entirely her own. It isn’t until a rebellious 17-year-old girl with secrets of her own starts asking pointed questions that Vivian finally tells her story. I hope you’ll find Orphan Train as engrossing to read as I did to research and write.

1. 1. Where does the idea of the novel, two voices talking about loss and solitude, comes from? And why did you choose the story, I guess not so famous as others, of the Orphan Train?

As a novelist I’ve always been interested in how people tell the stories of their lives and what these stories reveal, intentionally or not, about who they are. I am intrigued by the spaces between words, the silences that conceal long-kept secrets, the complexities that lie beneath the surface. And I am interested in the pervasive and insidious legacy of trauma: the way events beyond our control can shape and define our lives. All of my novels address these themes.

Like my four previous novels, Orphan Train is about cultural identity and family history. For the first time, however, I undertook a project that required a huge amount of historical, cultural, and geographical research. This novel traces the journey of Vivian Day, a 91-year-old woman, from a small village in Ireland to the crowded streets of the Lower East Side to the wide-open expanses of the Midwest to the coast of Maine. Her life spans nearly a decade, encompassing great historical change and upheaval.

Orphan Train is a story of mobility and rootlessness, highlighting a little-known but historically significant moment in American history. Between 1854 and 1929, so-called “orphan trains” transported more than 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children from the coastal cities of the eastern United States to the Midwest, where they were taken in and many were eventually adopted. 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. I wanted to expose and explore a piece of history that has been hidden in plain sight.

1. 1. What was it that was most compelling to you about the idea of an orphan train?

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. As a novelist I’ve always been fascinated with how people tell the stories of their lives and what those stories reveal – intentionally or not – about who they are. I’m intrigued by the spaces between words, the silences that conceal long-kept secrets, the elisions that belie surface appearance. 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. 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,” Kathryn Harrison writes. Over the course of this novel my central character, 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 – her own life story. Like my four previous novels, Orphan Train wrestles with questions of cultural identity and family history. But I knew right away that this was a bigger story and would require extensive research. The vast canvas appealed to me immensely. I was eager to broaden my scope.

1. 1. How does your novel of the Orphan Train differ from other books on the subject?

I chose to contrast the story of the orphan-train rider with that of a teenager in the current-day foster care system, which to my knowledge hasn’t been done before. I have found that this book attracts a broad readership, from teens to octogenarians 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. This book was more ambitious (a true historical event, a broader canvas) than my previous novels.

1. 1. How did the writing of the book personally affect you?

I had just started writing the novel when I attended my first NY Train Riders’ reunion in Little Falls, Minnesota, and there’s no question that the stories I heard and the people I met influenced me as I wrote – and still influence me today. As the train riders and their descendants stood up and told their stories it was clear that even the ones that ended happily were poignant, filled with loss. As one train rider said, you didn’t end up on a train unless you had a major trauma in your past; the trains were the last resort. I realized that I had a responsibility in writing this book to be as emotionally and factually accurate as possible. I needed to get the tone and texture right.

1. 1. Could you tell us about the origins of the first line you wrote for the novel? How did you know you had a first line? Did it come to you fully formed, or did you rework it? Did it end up being the first line of the novel, or of another section?

“I believe in ghosts” – the first line of the novel – was the first sentence I wrote. It came to me fully formed, and it set the tone for the novel. But it wasn’t until I finished writing the book that I realized where it had come from.

When I’m starting work on a novel, I gather scraps like a magpie and hang them on an idea board. On the Orphan Train board, I hung a hand-carved Celtic cross on a green ribbon, a Wabanaki dream catcher from Maine, a silver train pin from the New York Train Riders’ reunion in Little Falls, Minnesota, postcards from Ireland and the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. I tacked up notecards: “Food in Ireland 1900s” was one (“wheatmeal, hung beef, tongue, barley”). Another listed ideas I wanted to explore (“links between mis- placed/abandoned people with little in common”). And on one card, I scribbled a quote from a speaker at a Founding Hospi- tal reunion I attended in 2009: “In the absence of a clear story, people create ghost stories about their lives. They construct phantom parents and entire lives for them. When they get the real information, they move from a fantasy story to a reality. It can be hard and disillusioning. But it’s impor- tant to create a coherent narrative.” It was only later, as I dismantled the board, that I recognized how deeply those words had influenced me.

1. 1. Did you know everything that would happen in the novel when you started, or did you change things as you went along?

I had a plan for the novel, but as we all know, the best-laid plans … While I was researching the orphan trains I jotted down ideas that particularly interested me, and when I started writing I had a good sense of the arc of the story. The part that changed the most was the final third of the book. I knew there would be a reunion of some kind, but I wasn’t sure whether it would be with Maisie or May/Sarah. And I didn’t know whether Molly would be present. I had to write my way toward the major scenes of conflict before I understood the characters’ motivations enough to decide how they would react in a given situation. For example, I originally thought that Molly — despondent over coming to the end of her time with Vivian and wanting some kind of memento — would steal Vivian’s necklace, and that Dina would find it, (rightfully) accuse her of stealing, and throw her out of the house. By the time I got to that point in the novel, I knew that Molly would never do that to Vivian; they had become too close. It made more sense for Vivian to give Molly the book and for Dina to wrongly accuse her of stealing it.

Follow on Substack

Connect with Christina