“An immersive historical tale with chilling twists and turns.” Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World “Blistering, moving and profound…an extraordinary exploration of the plight of immigrants, as two very different women grapple with finding, keeping, and changing their place in the world.” Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice – and love – triumph at last. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum – the first step in a long and arduous journey to find her way back to her remaining family. Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.”
Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision.
When food runs out in the cramped tenement she calls home, Pia must venture alone into the quarantined city in search of supplies, leaving her baby brothers behind.īernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Funeral crepe and quarantine signs appear on doors as victims drop dead in the streets and desperate survivors wear white masks to ward off illness. But as her city celebrates the end of war, an even more urgent threat arrives: the Spanish flu. In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded slums and the anti-immigrant sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. I can honestly still picture it in my head weeks later, and trust me when I say it is not a pretty sight.With vivid writing, immediately absorbing characters, and surprisingly timely issues around immigration, privilege and the frightening pandemic we face today, Ellen Marie Wiseman weaves a powerful tale of resilience and hope set in Philadelphia during the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak – the illness that went on to infect one-third of the world’s population… The way she describes the toll this flu took on people’s bodies…. Ellen does not hold back on describing the ways in which those affected by the Spanish Flu suffered. I will say, though, if you have a light stomach, this might not be a book for you (at least not at the beginning). The Orphan Collector was ultimately a great book and I’m glad I didn’t let my distaste for Bernice stop me from getting to the end. So much so that I almost stopped listening to the book because Bernice made me so upset! However, don’t let her stop you from reading this page-turner! Ellen Marie Wiseman does a phenomenal job depicting this character. That being said, she is a terrible, terrible human (in my not-so-humble opinion). I mean, I completely understand her heartache at losing her husband and her baby boy to the Spanish Flu. I don’t even know where to begin with this witch of a woman. Her story alone is what kept me hanging on until the end of the book, needing to know if she ever finds her baby brothers (sorry, no spoilers here, folks).
I felt like she was forced to grow up so quickly and she handled it with grace. As a young girl during this time, I found her story so inspiring as she perseveres through unimaginable conditions and life experiences, from losing her mother, to contracting and surviving the flu, and overcoming it all. Once I got past the initial shock of how history repeats itself, I was drawn into the story of Pia as she navigated this dreadful time. Can I just say how surreal it was to read about how over 100 years ago there was a massive epidemic in which people were dying so rapidly, businesses shut down, and the hospitals were overran. First and foremost, the story takes place during the Spanish Influenza.
The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman was such a captivating read (or in my case, listen).