Mercy Train
A Novel
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3.8 • 9 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A rich, luminous novel of three remarkable women connected across a century by a family secret and by the fierce brilliance of their love
Samantha's 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 Iris's 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 America's past: From 1854 to 1929 orphan trains from New York transported 150,000 to 200,000 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, an affecting and wonderfully woven novel about three generations of motherhood, family, and the surprising sacrifices we make for the people we love.
Originally published by Henry Holt and Company under the title Mothers and Daughters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meadows (Calling Out) lightly explores the interplay between mothers and daughters in this thin intergenerational drama. Sam, a 30-something new mom, tries to meet the needs of her daughter and maintain her own identity while dealing with the recent death of her mother, Iris. We meet Iris just before her death as she invites Sam home to help her prepare for her demise. Then there's Violet, Iris's mother, who at the age of 11 roamed the streets of New York, until her poverty-stricken mother put her on an orphan train to the Midwest. Violet's story is the best told, with details of her New York life and her experiences on the orphan train easily stealing the show from the more staid and familiar contemporary plot. Generational differences in opportunities, attitudes, and expectations are patly played out, but there's little attention paid to anything deeper than the surface ways the women affect each others' lives. Meadows writes decent prose, but the story doesn't dig deep enough.
Customer Reviews
Mercy Train
I had a hard time with the way the story jumps from one era to another making the story disjointed and hard to follow. Several times the outcome is given away making the back and forth between eras nonsensical. The story I was looking for with this book was summed up in the Epilogue and offered little in the way of knowing what actually happened to the main character during or after her journey on the Mercy Train.