Orphan Trains - Stephen O'Connor

 Sub-title: The story of Charles Loring Brace and the children he saved and failed

This is a totally different perspective on the orphan trains of the late 1800's from the novel I read earlier this month.  As the sub-title indicates, it is primarily the story of the life of Charles Loring Brace, who founded the Children's Aid Society (CAS) and ran it until his death.  He initiated the idea of shipping children West to be adopted into a better life than what he felt they were living in New York City.  It's a complicated story of trying to effect change with some success and great failures.  The book is a detailed portrait of how Brace came to be an advocate for children and how his beliefs and attitudes shaped the mission of the CAS.  The author seemed to squeeze every piece of information he found on Brace and the CAS organization, leading to an exhaustively detailed account.  It would have been a better story if he'd focused on the milestones in Brace's life.  

The book is a great reference for those interested in the orphan train evolution and its eventual demise.  The last chapter describes how it was the instigation for the child welfare and foster care systems that came about later in the 1900's and are with us today.  I've identified the biological parents of a couple of orphan train riders for their descendants and this book contributes to my understanding of the placements and its effects on the children. 

Published:  2001  Read: September 2024  Genre: History

Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

 I think I've enjoyed everyone of Barbara Kingsolver's books.  Her characters are realistic and engaging. In this story, she borrows from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens using the same first person narrative of an orphan from birth to adulthood in a modern day setting.  The story was so moving because she poignantly portrays the struggles of single moms, abandoned and fostered children, drug abuse from prescriptions for pain, the power of love and ultimately the strength of the human spirit  This one goes near the top of my 2023 list.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Published: 2022  Read: October 2023  Genre: Fiction

Learning to Live - Theresa Cameron

 Sub-title: A Black Woman's Journey Beyond Foster Care

This is the concluding memoir of Theresa, who died in 2012, possibly due to heart problems.  

Her voice is one of someone who never was able to function fully in society because of the scars left from growing up in foster care.  It's a sad story to read.  While she triumphed over her fears to obtain a PhD from Harvard in Urban Design and became an associate professor at Arizona State University, after the book;s publication she was fired from ASU in a controversial decision and died a few years later.  

Published: 2009  Read: August 2022  Genre: Memoir, Auto-biography

Foster Care Odyssey - Theresa Cameron

 Sub-title: A black girl's story

While travelling this summer, I picked this up at a campground book exchange.  Serendipitously, this story of a woman raised from birth in the foster care system is the story of an adoptee whose mother left her with Catholic charities and who never knew her father.  The author survived this system, barely, and went on to get her doctorate from Harvard.  

I learned a lot about how the foster care system operates and the impact on children.  Inadvertently, I think, the author's writing revealed the guarded, stilted communication style that came from an unstable, unpredictable childhood.

I wanted to see if she ever found her father so I researched her. Therese Cameron wrote a second book about her struggles in her adult life Learning to Live: A Black Woman's Journey Beyond Foster Care.

But, I also found that she was fired from Arizona State University for alleged plagiarism of a syllabus, and sued and lost a discrimination case that she brought as the root cause of her firing.  After losing the case in 2011, she died in 2012 and I've yet to find any genealogical records of her death.  

I ordered her 2nd book ...review to come.

Published: 2002  Read: June 2022  Genre: Memoir