Searching For You (Book #3 in the Orphan Train Series) by Jody Hedlund [Review & Giveaway]

My thoughts:  My mother was born about 60 years after the setting of the Orphan Train Series, but her plight could easily have been that of one of the orphans of the time. Her father died leaving a widow and two very small children. In that time period, widows usually had an extremely difficult time raising small children alone. So my grandmother did surrender her two small children, quite reluctantly, into the care and keeping of a church orphanage.

In Jody Hedlund's series of three books about the plight of a few of the children whose fate was to begin life away from the city and move to the wilderness area of America - the country life, and be part of families who were suppose to provide love, care, food, shelter for them is beautifully and succinctly portrayed in the series. The culminating story of the youngest sister, Sophie, and her journey is heart rending.

The story opens with Sophia in New York and she is embroiled in the gang life believing she is fine. She then witnesses her boyfriend, head of a gang, murder someone. She flees for safety taking the two young children (not hers biologically, but hers emotionally) she cares for and joining an outgoing Orphan Train loaded with children of many ages being sent West to join new families.

The reader's heart is wrenched at the tearing scene when she is parted from the two young children as they are placed in a different home. And then later at an attempt when she tries to see them but their new "father" attacks her.

Her actions are definitely questionable. But the situation is heart breaking.

The book and the entire series is one I can heartily recommend.

[A note about book #3:It alludes to child abuse and sexual assault and also the intimate emotional feelings of newly weds. Because of this, I would hesitate to recommend the final book for younger than 18 years.]

About the book: Despite years on the run, Sophie Neumann is determined to care for two young children. She won't abandon them the way she thinks her older sisters abandoned her. But times are growing desperate, and when she falls in with the wrong crowd and witnesses a crime, she realizes fleeing 1850s New York is her only option.

Disappearing with her two young charges into a group of orphans heading west by train, Sophie hopes to find safety and a happy life. When the train stops in Illinois for the first placement of orphans, Sophie faces the most difficult choice of her life.

Reinhold Weiss has finally purchased his own small farm. With mounting debts, a harvest to bring in, and past scars that haunt him, he's in no position to give his heart away . . . but can he say no when his long-lost friend shows up on a nearby train pleading for his help?

~~ Read a preview ~~

My reviews of Orphan Train Series:  With You Always #1     Together Forever #2

My review of "Searching For You" soon to come.

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Ends January 5 at 8:00 a.m. EST

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Disclosure: Prize for giveaway is provided by author and/or publisher who will send the book directly to the winner. I received a complimentary copy to facilitate my review. Opinions are mine alone and are freely given. Purchase it on Amazon

Searching for You (Orphan Train Series book #3) by Jody Hedlund [Giveaway - USA]

About the book: Despite years on the run, Sophie Neumann is determined to care for two young children. She won't abandon them the way she thinks her older sisters abandoned her. But times are growing desperate, and when she falls in with the wrong crowd and witnesses a crime, she realizes fleeing 1850s New York is her only option.

Disappearing with her two young charges into a group of orphans heading west by train, Sophie hopes to find safety and a happy life. When the train stops in Illinois for the first placement of orphans, Sophie faces the most difficult choice of her life.

Reinhold Weiss has finally purchased his own small farm. With mounting debts, a harvest to bring in, and past scars that haunt him, he's in no position to give his heart away . . . but can he say no when his long-lost friend shows up on a nearby train pleading for his help?

~~ Read a preview ~~

My reviews of Orphan Train Series:  With You Always #1     Together Forever #2

My review of "Searching For You" soon to come.

GIVEAWAY

Begins December 8

Ends January 5 at 8:00 a.m. EST

Open to USA addresses only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: Prize for giveaway is provided by author and/or publisher who will send the book directly to the winner.

TOGETHER FOREVER (ORPHAN TRAIN #2) by Jody Hedlund [Review & Giveaway]

ISBN:9780764218057
Bethany House Publishers
Paperback $15.99

My thoughts:   The trauma and heart-hurting rawness of families torn apart, abandoned, suffering, and being given away to others is poignantly written into the pages of Jody Hedlund's Orphan Train series. She has fleshed out the story of peoples in the mid-1800's who because of poverty found themselves in conditions where there were thousands of children abandoned to the streets of New York. 

There are two main story lines or emphasis in Together Forever. The first would be the story of the children being taken from the streets of New York to be resettled with families in the mid-west. It is about them as individuals with fears, troubles, attitudes that make them either considered to be good or poor choices for those willing to take them in. The second story line in the book is a developing romance between the two main characters, Marianne Neumann and Andrew Brady. 

The children include many ages from toddlers to teens. When they stop at the towns that have families awaiting the opportunity to choose a child to take in, the children face a gamut of types of families. They are peered at, examined for ability to work, and scrutinized. Siblings are torn apart and some are deemed "unwanted." It was a sad time and socially both a good happening and a terrible blot on humanity. 

Being in close proximity for many weeks as agents transporting these children aboard the Orphan Trains, the young adults, Marianne and Andrew, became drawn to one another and it soon their friedship blossomed into a sweet romance. 

Together Forever can easily be read as a stand alone story. However, other characters in the book were in book one in the series and the continuity is nice and makes for a more enjoyable read.

The plight of the children in this series touches my heart as my own mother was raised in a orphanage because circumstances prevented her mother keeping her at home. Her situation was not as dire as that of the children consigned to the outbound Orphan Train, but it is a reminder that life can be hard and when hardship comes, the children suffer the most.

I recommend Together Forever.

About the book: Marianne Neumann has one goal in life: to find her lost younger sister, Sophie. When Marianne takes a job as a placing agent with the Children’s Aid Society in 1858 New York, she not only hopes to give children a better life but seeks to discover whether Sophie ended up leaving the city on an orphan train.. 

Andrew Brady, her fellow agent on her first placing trip, is a former schoolteacher who has an easy way with the children–firm but tender and funny. Underneath his handsome charm, though, seems to linger a grief that won’t go away–and a secret from his past that he keeps hidden. As the two team up placing orphans amid small railroad towns in Illinois, they find themselves growing ever closer . . . until a shocking tragedy threatens to upend all their work and change one of their lives forever.

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Begins May 15

Ends June 7 at 12:01 a.m. EDT

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DISCLOSURE: I receive a complimentary copy to facilitate this review. Opinions are my own and are freely given.

With You Always (Orphan Train #1) by Jody Hedlund [Review & Giveaway]

My thoughts:  As always, I highly anticipate a new book from author Jody Hedlund. When I saw she was writing a series featuring the Orphan Train of the 1850s I had an additional interest. My mother and her brother were placed in an orphanage in the early 1920s because their father died and their mother had no means of supporting them herself. She wanted them safely kept and their needs met. This was not an Orphan Train case, but still the situation of desperation that society imposed on the poor necessitated that desperate steps be taken. This was hard on my mother, her brother, and their mother.

As I read With You Always, I came to the realization that this story was essentially laying the story behind the desperate times and desperate people who resort to desperate resolutions. Poverty is always around us, but in the financial crisis of the 1850s despair and need resulted in children, young ladies, young boys, and whole families living on the streets - much like some situations today. But in 1850 there was little help available.

Now factor into the story the wealthier side of society and land development around existing railroad lines and you have the need to send men and women into new situations for work to establish new towns with homes, farms, and accompanying businesses. And with the crisis that society's ills placed on young and old alike, these rail lines were used to send forth children as orphans to work these farms and help in these homes. In With You Always the sending of children is hinted at as it touched on the family of Elise Neumann who was working to help "build" one of these new towns.

I am sure that as future books in the Orphan Train Series are available, we will see the plight of the children placed on these trains and sent forth into unknown areas and situations that sometimes were good but often were not.

Hedlund paints a wonderful word picture of the times and events and draws characters that are charming, fun, unlikeable, witty - the whole gamut of personalities.

The historical record of this period in New York with the financial crisis, gang war and rioting, and destitute situation of a huge number of the populace is well written in this book. Another good read from the pen of Jody Hedlund.

About the book: When a financial crisis in 1850s New York leaves three orphaned sisters nearly destitute, the oldest, Elise Neumann, knows she must take action. She's had experience as a seamstress, and the New York Children's Aid Society has established a special service: placing out seamstresses and trade girls. Even though Elise doesn't want to leave her sisters for a job in Illinois, she realizes this may be their last chance.

The son of one of New York City's wealthiest entrepreneurs, Thornton Quincy faces a dilemma. His father is dying, and in order to decide which of his sons will inherit everything, he is requiring them to do two things in six months: build a sustainable town along the Illinois Central Railroad, and get married. Thornton is tired of standing in his twin brother's shadow and is determined to win his father's challenge. He doesn't plan on meeting a feisty young woman on his way west, though.

GIVEAWAY

Begins June 17

Ends July 9 at 12:01 a.m. EDT

Open to USA addresses only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway DISCLOSURE: I received a complimentary copy to facilitate a review. Opinions are my own. I was not compensated.