Our virtual book club utilizes the internet for our connecting. Facebook offers us a central meeting ground while offering us a place to answer questions about each months book, give insight into what we think the author was aiming for and so much more. Each month we invite our members to suggest and vote on the book we will be reading next, sometimes a specific genre is decided other times, the voting is wide open.
February 2015 Book Club Pick
The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
You can purchase your copy of The Orphan Train here.
“Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.” goodreads
January 2015 Book Club Discussion
I hope that you all enjoyed Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler. I invite you to join us on Facebook for our discussion which will take place on January 29th. Feel free to ask any discussion questions throughout the day. If you haven’t yet, we’d love to have you be a part of our Facebook Group where we share book ideas, engage in general discussions and much more!
Tags: book club
Blog, book club, January 2015 Posted in
6 comments
6 comments on “Book Club Selection: February 2015”
This book looks really good. I’m adding it to my list.
Recently read this….soooo good.
I just downloaded it onto my iPad, I can’t wait to start. I am so glad I found this site.
What a great book! I never knew such thing existed.
My Italian Great-Grandmother was taken from a NY orphanage, with her brother, to the countryside of Pennsylvania on an orphan train, where she was adopted by a German family. The farmers selected a child, agreed to give them their surname, feed them and give them a place to sleep until they were of age. One signature and the adoption was complete. She was signed into indentured servanthood at the age of 4 yrs old. There is no record of her brother. She was a maid to the family’s four daughters. As they left to become nuns, the family made her go clean other people’s homes to ‘earn her keep’. She made ten cents a day cleaning and was allowed to keep ten cents per month. She wanted to be a nun, like her ‘sisters’, but since her heritage was unknown, the church would not take her. In 1904, after the last daughter left, her ‘parents’ sold her to a railroad man for marriage. She weighed 70 lbs, he was 6’5″ tall. She was a strict & devout Catholic, he was a philanderer. She bore eight children in seven years, but only five survived. He brought home other women and never provided for his family. My tiny Great-Grandma and my four year old Grandmother did laundry in a washtub, with a solid cast-iron iron (that heated on the wood burning stove), to keep food on the table. He divorced her fifteen years later, but she never signed the divorce papers. Being Catholic, she didn’t believe in divorce.
She never knew she came from an orphan train or that she was actually Italian, until her Grandson did some family heritage work, when he was in his forties, and found the records. We now have a copy of her birth certificate and have found her Father’s signature in the archives at Ellis Island. Her Mother died in childbirth and her Father came to America to make a new start, not knowing Italians were the low-of-the-low here in the late 1800’s.
I can’t wait to read the book!
I loved this book! The plot and characters were well though out and I felt like I was on the train with her. I loved everything about it.