书名：Orphan Train 孤儿列车
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数890L
作者：Christina Baker Kline克里斯蒂娜·贝克·克兰
出版社名称：William Morrow
出版时间：2015
语种：英文
ISBN：9780062430847
商品尺寸：10.6 x 2.2 x 17.1 cm
包装：简装
页数：352

Orphan Train《孤儿列车》是美国作家克兰的代表作。自2013年出版至今，销量已经突破150万册，已连续85周位列《纽约时报》小说榜第1名。《孤儿列车》同时也是《今日美国》和独立书商协会的在榜畅销书，美国20多家读书俱乐部的首推图书，众多知名作家都对其赞誉有加。
《孤儿列车》是克兰笔下极具情感浓度的一部小说，以细腻的笔触写尽人生至情，读来令人潸然泪下。这个故事让我们看到命运在一个人的身上所呈现出的悲欢离合，也让我们感悟到对待人生应有的信念，以爱与勇气去接受生活赐予的一切悲欢。
推荐理由：
1. 蔡康永诚意推荐，温暖无数心灵的希望之书；
2. 跨越近一个世纪的生命悲欢，媲美《追风筝的人》的至深感动；
3. 英文原版，内容无删减，小巧便携。
#1 New York Times Bestseller
The runaway bestseller that has swept the nation, with more than one million copies sold.
Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck and chance.
This is the story of one such child.
As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are reminders of a turbulent past.
Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.
Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship.
Review
“A compelling story about loss, adaptability, and courage… With compassion and delicacy Kline presents a little-known chapter of American history and draws comparisons with the modern-day foster care system.”  —— Library Journal
“In ORPHAN TRAIN, Christina Baker Kline seamlessly knits together the past and present of two women, one young and one old. Kline reminds us that we never really lose anyone or anything or—perhaps most importantly—ourselves.”—— Ann Hood, author ofThe Knitting Circle
“I loved this book: its absorbing back-and-forth story, its vivid history, its eminently loveable characters. ORPHAN TRAIN wrecked my heart and made me glad to be literate.” —— Monica Wood, author ofWhen We Were the Kennedys
“One of the most powerful novels I’ve ever read... I am compelling all of you, even begging you, to make this novel your next read. You’ll be talking about it for years to come!” —— Naples Daily News(FL)
“A gem.”—— Huffington Post

虽然不是所有离别都能盼来重逢，但失去的会以另一种方式回来。
1854到1929年间，自美国东部出发的孤儿列车承载着上万名无家可归的孩童前往中西部地区，他们在沿途各站任人挑选，未来命运如何全凭运气决定。9岁的小姑娘薇薇安就是其中之一，可是好运没有降临到她的头上。对她而言，登上孤儿列车只是命运悲欢的大幕掀开的微微一角。
如今的薇薇安91岁了，漫长的人生让她失去了太多的东西，多到不敢回忆。一次偶然的善心之举让薇薇安结识了孤儿莫莉，往事如潮水般涌来再次将她淹没。然而，这次生命给出了应有的答案。
Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude?
As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.
Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.

克里斯蒂娜·贝克·克兰，生于英国，长在美国，很受欧美读者喜爱的小说家之一。《孤儿列车》是克兰知名的代表作。该书2013年在美国上市，目前销量已经突破150万册，已连续85周蝉联《纽约时报》小说榜前列，目前仍然在榜。这本书同时也是《今日美国》和独立书商协会的在榜畅销书，是美国20多家读书俱乐部的首推图书，众多知名作家都对其赞誉有加。2015年2月加拿大版上市，空降畅销榜冠军。《孤儿列车》是克兰笔下极具情感浓度的一部小说，以细腻的笔触写尽人生至情，读来令人潸然泪下。这个故事让我们看到命运在一个人的身上所呈现出的悲欢离合，也让我们感悟到对待人生应有的信念，以爱与勇气去接受生活赐予的一切悲欢。
Christina Baker Kline was born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Cambridge, the American South, and in Maine. Kline is a graduate of Yale (BA in English), Cambridge University (MA in Literature), and the University of Virginia (MFA), where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing. Kline served as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University from 2007 to 2011, where she taught graduate and undergraduate creative writing and literature. She is the author ofseveral novels: Sweet Water (1993),Desire Lines (1999),The Way Life Should Be (2007),Bird in Hand (2009),Orphan Train (2013),A Piece of the World (2017),Orphan Train Girl (2017). 

Prologue
I believe in ghosts. They’re the ones who haunt us, the ones who have left us behind. Many times in my life I have felt them around me, observing, witnessing, when no one in the living world knew or cared what happened.
I am ninety-one years old, and almost everyone who was once in my life is now a ghost.
Sometimes these spirits have been more real to me than people, more real than God. They fill silence with their weight, dense and warm, like bread dough rising under cloth. My gram, with her kind eyes and talcum-dusted skin. My da, sober, laughing. My mam, singing a tune. The bitterness and alcohol and depression are stripped away from these phantom incarnations, and they console and protect me in death as they never did in life.
I’ve come to think that’s what heaven is — a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.
Maybe I am lucky — that at the age of nine I was given the ghosts of my parents’ best selves, and at twenty-three the ghost of my true love’s best self. And my sister, Maisie, ever present, an angel on my shoulder. Eighteen months to my nine years, thirteen years to my twenty. Now she is eighty-four to my ninety-one, and with me still.
No substitute for the living, perhaps, but I wasn’t given a choice. I could take solace in their presence or I could fall down in a heap, lamenting what I’d lost.
The ghosts whispered to me, telling me to go on.
Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

Through her bedroom wall Molly can hear her foster parents talking about her in the living room, just beyond her door. “This is not what we signed up for,” Dina is saying. “If I’d known she had this many problems, I never would’ve agreed to it.”
“I know, I know.” Ralph’s voice is weary. He’s the one, Molly knows, who wanted to be a foster parent. Long ago, in his youth, when he’d been a “troubled teen,” as he told her without elaboration, a social worker at his school had signed him up for the Big Brother program, and he’d always felt that his big brother — his mentor, he calls him — kept him on track. But Dina was suspicious of Molly from the start. It didn’t help that before Molly they’d had a boy who tried to set the elementary school on fire. 
“I have enough stress at work,” Dina says, her voice rising. “I don’t need to come home to this shit.”
Dina works as a dispatcher at the Spruce Harbor police station, and as far as Molly can see there isn’t much to stress over — a few drunk drivers, the occasional black eye, petty thefts, accidents. If you’re going to be a dispatcher anywhere in the world, Spruce Harbor is probably the least stressful place imaginable. But Dina is high-strung by nature. The smallest things get to her. It’s as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn’t — which, of course, is pretty often — she is surprised and affronted. 
Molly is the opposite. So many things have gone wrong for her in her seventeen years that she’s come to expect it. When something does go right, she hardly knows what to think. 
Which was just what had happened with Jack. When Molly transferred to Mount Desert Island High School last year, in tenth grade, most of the kids seemed to go out of their way to avoid her. They had their friends, their cliques, and she didn’t fit into any of them. It was true that she hadn’t made it easy; she knows from experience that tough and weird is preferable to pathetic and vulnerable, and she wears her Goth persona like armor. Jack was the only one who’d tried to break through. 
It was mid-October, in social studies class. When it came time to team up for a project, Molly was, as usual, the odd one out. Jack asked her to join him and his partner, Jody, who was clearly less than thrilled. For the entire fifty-minute class, Molly was a cat with its back up. Why was he being so nice? What did he want from her? Was he one of those guys who got a kick out of messing with the weird girl? Whatever his motive, she wasn’t about to give an inch. She stood back with her arms crossed, shoulders hunched, dark stiff hair in her eyes. She shrugged and grunted when Jack asked her questions, though she followed along well enough and did her share of the work. “That girl is freakin’ strange,” Molly heard Jody mutter as they were leaving class after the bell rang. “She creeps me out.” When Molly turned and caught Jack’s eye, he surprised her with a smile. “I think she’s kind of awesome,” he said, holding Molly’s gaze. For the first time since she’d come to this school, she couldn’t help herself; she smiled back. 
Over the next few months, Molly got bits and pieces of Jack’s story. His father was a Dominican migrant worker who met his mother picking blueberries in Cherryfield, got her pregnant, moved back to the D. R. to shack up with a local girl, and never looked back. His mother, who never married, works for a rich old lady in a shorefront mansion. By all rights Jack should be on the social fringes too, but he isn’t. He has some major things going for him: flashy moves on the soccer field, a dazzling smile, great big cow eyes, and ridiculous lashes. And even though he refuses to take himself seriously, Molly can tell he’s way smarter than he admits, probably even smarter than he knows. 
Molly couldn’t care less about Jack’s prowess on the soccer field, but smart she respects. (The cow eyes are a bonus.) Her own curiosity is the one thing that has kept her from going off the rails. Being Goth wipes away any expectation of conventionality, so Molly finds she’s free to be weird in lots of ways at once. She reads all the time — in the halls, in the cafeteria — mostly novels with angsty protagonists: The Virgin Suicides, Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar. She copies vocabulary words down in a notebook because she likes the way they sound: Harridan. Pusillanimous. Talisman. Dowager. Enervating. Sycophantic...