Orphan Train

research, I spoke to Jill Smolowe, a writer and reporter for People , who thought there might be enough material on the surviving “train riders,” as they
     call themselves, for a People magazine feature. Though the story never materialized, the folder of material and
     contacts Jill compiled proved tremendously useful. Most significant, Jill introduced
     me to Renee Wendinger, president of the Midwest Orphan Train Riders from New York
     organization, whose mother, Sophia Hillesheim, was a train rider. At the Orphan Train
     Riders of New York’s forty-ninth reunion in 2009 in Little Falls, Minnesota, Renee
     introduced me to half a dozen train riders, all now in their nineties, including Pat
     Thiessen, a train rider from Ireland whose experience uncannily resembled the one
     I had sketched for my character. Throughout the writing of this novel Renee has patiently
     and generously offered her wise counsel in ways large and small, from correcting egregious
     errors to providing historical nuance and shading. Her book, Extra! Extra! The Orphan Trains and Newsboys of New York , has been an invaluable resource. The novel would not have been the same without
     her.
    Other resources I relied on during my orphan train research were the Children’s Aid
     Society; the New York Foundling (I attended their 140th homecoming in 2009 and met
     a number of train riders there); the New York Tenement Museum; the Ellis Island Immigration
     Museum; and the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia, Kansas, a museum and research
     center with a vibrant online presence that includes many train rider stories. In the
     Irma and Paul Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy at the
     New York Public Library, I found noncirculating lists of orphaned and indigent children
     from the Children’s Aid Society and the New York Foundling, first-person testimonials
     from train riders and their families, handwritten records, notes from desperate mothers
     explaining why they had abandoned their children, reports on Irish immigrants, and
     many other documents that aren’t available anywhere else. Books I found particularly
     helpful include Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story by Andrea Warren; Children of the Orphan Trains, 1854–1929 by Holly Littlefield; and Rachel Calof’s Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains edited by J. Sanford Rikoon (which I found at Bonanzaville, a pioneer prairie village
     and museum complex in West Fargo).
    During my years as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, I was privileged to
     receive a Faculty Fellowship and a Fordham Research Grant, which enabled me to conduct
     research in Minnesota and Ireland. A fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative
     Arts gave me space and time to write. Irish native Brian Nolan took me on an insider’s
     tour of County Galway. His stories about his childhood housekeeper Birdie Sheridan
     provided inspiration for Vivian’s grandmother’s life. In the village of Kinvara, Robyn
     Richardson ferried me from pubs to Phantom Street and handed me an important resource: Kinvara: A Seaport Town on Galway Bay by Caoilte Breatnach and Anne Korff. Among other books, An Irish Country Childhood by Marrie Walsh helped me with period and place details.
    At the same time that I was writing this book, my mother, Tina Baker, began teaching
     a course on Mount Desert Island in Maine called “Native American Women in Literature
     and Myth.” At the end of the course, she asked students to use the Indian concept
     of portaging to describe “their journeys along uncharted waters and what they chose
     to carry forward in portages to come,” as she writes in the compilation of their narratives, Voices Yearning to be Heard: Acadia Senior College Students Pay Tribute to the Missing
     Voices of History . The concept of portaging, I realized, was the missing strand I needed to weave my
     book together. Additional titles shaped my perspective: Women of the Dawn by Bunny McBride, In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine by Donna Loring (a member of the Penobscot Indian Nation and a former state legislator),
     and Wabanakis of Maine and the Maritimes by the Wabanaki Program of the American Friends Services Committee. The websites
     of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, and the Penobscot Indian Nation provided
     valuable material as well.
    I relied on good friends and family for support, counsel, and advice: Cynthia Baker,