Kearney, Cheyenne, Rawlins. Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco. At each train station, a few lucky orphans from the crowded streets of New York City receive the fulfillment of their dreams: a home and family. This "orphan train" is the vision of Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society, who cannot bear to see innocent children abandoned in the overpopulated cities of the mid-nineteenth-century. Yet it is not just the orphans whose...

Sent away on an orphan train by his self-centered father Jessie, Will keeps hoping Jessie will return to claim him, even though the people he lives with care for him far more.

"Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to 'aging out' out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse ... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds...

"Riders on the Orphan Train is a novel about a little-known piece of American history. Bewteen 1854 and 1929, over 250,000 orphans and 'surrendered' children were 'placed out' across the country. They started their journey in New York and were given away in train stations in every state in the continental United States. This is the story of two children from very different backgrounds, Ezra Duval and Elizabeth Farrell, who find themselves on the same...