Mercy Train: A Novel (Reading Group Gold)

A rich luminous novel of three remarkable women connected across a century by a family secret and by the fierce brilliance of their love . Samanthas mother has been dead almost a year when the box arrives on her doorstep. In it she finds recipe cards keepsakes letters-relics of her mother Iriss past. But as Sam sifts through these family treasures she uncovers evidence that her grandmother Violet had a much more difficult childhood then she could have ever imagined. And Sam a struggling new mother herself begins to see her own burdens in a completely different light. Moving from the tempered calm of contemporary Madison Wisconsin to the seedy underbelly of early twentieth century New York we come face to face with a haunting piece of Americas past: From 1854 to 1929 orphan trains from New York transported 150000 to 200000 destitute orphaned or abandoned children across the country to find homes on farms in the Midwest. Rae Meadows takes us on our own journey of discovery in Mercy Train (originally published as Mothers & Daughters) an affecting and wonderfully woven novel about three generations of motherhood family and the surprising sacrifices we make for the people we love.