The Orphan Collector

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Wiseman, Ellen , Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Wiseman, Ellen Marie
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Wiseman, Ellen	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Wiseman, Ellen Marie	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024

Includes a reading group guide.
"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. Army. But as her city celebrates the end of war, an even more urgent threat arrives: 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. 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. Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. 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." Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum - the first step in a long and arduous journey. 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. 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.-- Publisher's description.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Fascinating submitted by cldaniels on July 8, 2021, 3:27pm I was fascinated with the parallels of living during the Spanish Flu pandemic and our current pandemic. A captivating story of the surviving as a orphan and prejudices that immigrants faced after WWI.

Read this! submitted by leah karr on August 19, 2022, 6:32pm This was captivating and a quick read