In 1859, Martha was newly widowed and quickly made aware that her husband had put their children under the stewardship of a predatory man. Rather than stay and have this man abuse her and her children, she packs up the children and flees to New York City to start a life on their own. She underestimated the difficulties of starting over with no financial backing. When Martha finally finds a job, it is for a man who is no better than the one she fled, and it doesn’t pay enough to both house and feed her family of five.
Eventually, Martha discovers The Home for the Friendless, an aid organization that helps feed, house, and educate children in need. When desperation gets to the extreme, Martha takes her children there so that they can get some help and food while she works on a new plan for their survival. When visiting day comes around, Martha finds that all four of her children have been sent to homes in other states and will not return to New York. Now Martha has to make another new plan, but this time, it means finding her children and bringing them home.
I am an affiliate with Amazon and  bookshop.org, so any purchases through this post’s links will give me a commission back. Check out the about page for more information on that and how I get my hands on these fantastic books.
Orphan Train stories have been around for decades. This is not the first one I’ve read, but this one hit differently, and I think that is because The Bereaved is written from the parent’s perspective. So many of these stories are told from the children’s point of view, and I found it refreshing to read from the other side. Writing from the mother’s point of view brought more emotion to the story, which helped draw me in. As a mother, I cannot even imagine the intense emotion that would come from being in Martha’s position. Just the betrayal alone of having this aid organization essentially steal my children instead of doing what they promised. That emotion came out in telling the story from Martha’s point of view.
Much of this time in our history is still kept secretive. Yes, there was a lot going on in our country then, but we need to tell more of these stories. I would love to see more exposure to this time and these issues in books to learn what happened. Using the mother’s perspective in this book is a great start.
Experiences in Reading 