The Orphan Collector.

   ✰✰✰✰✰

 CONTAINS SPOILERS

In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army, hoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon, dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving her infant twin brothers alone . . .



Since her baby died days ago, Bernice Groves has been lost in grief and bitterness. If doctors hadn’t been so busy tending to hordes of immigrants, perhaps they could have saved her son. When Bernice sees Pia leaving her tenement across the way, she is buoyed by a shocking, life-altering decision that leads her on a sinister mission: to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.”



As Pia navigates the city’s somber neighborhoods, she cannot know that her brothers won’t be home when she returns. And it will be a long and arduous journey to learn what happened—even as Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost. Only with persistence, and the courage to face her own shame and fear, will Pia put the pieces together and find the strength to risk everything to see justice at last. 

 

❀

 

Extraordinary.




This book was beyond what I had imagined. I have read historical fiction about pandemic before, and yet they were nothing like I just read. I finished the book last night and cannot get the story out of my mind. I am so full of emotions right now. As I read THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR and the pandemic of 1918, I couldn’t help but compare it to the coronavirus pandemic. I saw the similarities; however, there were relatively few differences between the two. I could imagine what they were going through, the fear that they felt, which wasn’t something I could imagine before the pandemic. I heard about the influenza pandemic of 1918, but I never suspected how horrific it was until reading Pia’s story. When I came across THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR on Goodreads, I knew that it was going to be a hard book to read. I wasn’t prepared how hard it would be. I was observed in the story from the first page. This book will break your heart into pieces. It’s a story that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.



Pia. I loved her from the beginning. I cannot even begin to imagine going through everything she has gone through at thirteen years old. I wanted to reach out to her, to hug her, and to hold her. From the moment that her mother got sick and died, it seemed that everything went wrong for her. No thirteen-year-old should have to go through what she went through. Then when she finally made it home, finding her brothers were gone, not knowing what happened to them. I cannot even begin to imagine what she must be going through at that moment. The emotions that were portrayed in THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR were strong, and I felt as I could feel everything that Pia was feeling. All through the story, I hoped that she would be able to find her brothers. I was glad that she got placed with Hudson’s. I was happy that she found a family who treated her the way she should have been treated, loved her for who she was. I loved the bond that Pia created with the family.



Bernice. Now, that’s a character I could not stand. In the beginning, she seemed okay, just a heartbroken mother who lost her son. Once she took twins, then I knew that there is something that wasn’t right with her. What she died afterward, that was even worse, and that’s when I disliked her even more. Bernice is not a character that anyone could like, and I was not too fond of the fact that she kept getting away with it. As I read the book, I hoped that she would get caught and pay what she had done. How could she possibly think that what she has been doing was okay? I felt nothing but anger towards that woman. I had never imagined that anyone could be that cruel. It seemed that she even thought that what she was doing, that she wasn’t doing anything wrong.


THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR was the second book that I have read by ELLEN MARIE WISEMAN, and I cannot wait to read the rest of her works. A highly recommended book for any historical fiction fans.