Another confusing book.

[Jada59]

I am reading another of my daughter's old books. It's a novel called "Orphan Train". I don't know if orphan trains were real or not. Part of the book takes place from 1929 on. Starts in NYC. Half of an apartment burns down. For some reason, a girl's life is spared. The rest of her family died in the fire. The apartment next door was spared. The people next door took the girl in for three days, then contacted the authorities to take the girl. Odd because the authorities were already there with the fire. Anyhoo...

Asst. orphans were put on a train headed for Chicago, then on to other places where the children were put on display and people took them in, often to work on their farm or in their business. Given that it was 1929 and there were no child labor laws, the working part was likely true.

But... The book keeps switching from that time frame to 2011 to what seems to be a totally unrelated story and unrelated characters. The more recent part gives far fewer details and is so vague that I've been skimming it.

The older time frame interested me until I found glaring errors. At first I saw some things that made me wonder... Did they have that back then? Every house/business seems to have electricity. I'm not sure how common that was back then. I'm thinking not because both of my parents were born a few years later and both tell me they lived in homes with gas lights for a few years. There is mention of lack of indoor plumbing or only cold water in some cases. So that seems right.

The girl is taken in by a couple who run a clothing sewing company from their home. The workers tell her that they are not fed much and the fridge is kept locked. The coil top refrigerator was invented in 1927 and the couple were wealthy so perhaps the fridge part could be true. But... Why would they be feeding the workers when all of the workers save for the girl were being paid by the piece and did not live there? Wouldn't that be a bit unusual?

The first day the girl is there, she has to do the dishes after dinner. But the next day, the woman tells her she is not allowed to do dishes because she might steal food.

They tell the girl she has to sleep on a pallet in the hallway, but later she is punished for not putting the linens on her bed tightly enough.

Then one day, another worker takes the girl to the store to buy cheesecloth and sewing supplies. She gives the girl a penny and she uses it to buy a stick of candy. The girl has trouble deciding because there are so many flavors. She eventually chooses one that is a mix of watermelon and green apple.

Uh... Alarm bells! I know peppermint would have been available back then and probably flavors like sassafrass and clove. Maybe even wintergreen and spearmint. But I was born in 1959 and when I was young, we only had maybe 10-12 flavors of candy sticks. I don't think watermelon and green apple even came into the picture until the 1970's! Maybe the late 1960's. I did try to look this up. Did not find the flavor history but did see that these were considered upscale candies and sold for a nickel or a dime. So not penny candies.

I don't know if I can go on with this book. I love reading historical pieces but not when so many details are wrong!

I guess this is more of a rant than anything.

 

[Rustyoznail]

There's a recent thread about historical accuracy and how some main stream authors are just lazy. I'm thinking this one fits into that description.

 

[Jada59]

There's a recent thread about historical accuracy and how some main stream authors are just lazy. I'm thinking this one fits into that description.

Yeah. I did participate in that thread. I'm just not very good at finding threads.

I had to quit reading the book. I did look at online reviews. Most gave it 5 stars but the 1 stars said how bad the writing was and how inaccurate were. The author kept switching tenses.

The book did finally connect the two stories near the end. The older women in more recent times was in fact the girl from the past time whose name had been changed.

As pointed out by some of the bad reviews, the author seemed bored with the story and rushed through things at the end, and the mistakes flew fast and furious.

She was sent to a poor family who slept on mattresses with no sheets. Then they all got lice so she had to wash the sheets.

Then she got kicked out of the house and she trudged along in the bitter cold in her boots and mustard colored coat. Prior, she mentioned she had been given a pair of sturdy black shoes but no boots, and a used coat, several sizes too small. She also said she was wrapped in a filthy blanket, apparently forgetting that she said she was wearing a coat. That's when I had to stop reading.

Historical inaccuracies are one thing. But forgetting the very details that the author herself wrote? Yikes!

 

[Rustyoznail]

Yeah. That's just poor writing. You'd think the editor would have picked those errors up.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Friend who works for a publisher says many genre books don't get edited any more. Especially when it's yet another misery-lit memoir or similar that they want to publish quickly before the trend dies off (indirectly killing off the trend as people start to associate it with crap books).

Having a present-day character be the grown-up historic character (with name change, plastic surgery, sex change, amnesia as needed) is a total cliché.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't know about Chicago, but I think almost all housing in New York had electricity by 1929. Gas lighting mostly ended around the First World War. My grandfather remembered gas lights from his childhood in the first decade of the 20th Century.

I think all housing had indoor plumbing too, although there were "cold-water" flats until after World War II. Some of the oldest buildings still had shared bathrooms in the hallway. Single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings had shared bathrooms at least into the 1980s.

Mechanical refrigerators were not common for working-class people until the 1940s. Most still had ice-boxes and had to rely on ice deliveries.

Rural areas were very different, of course, and many people did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. I suppose they relied on lamps (kerosene, maybe?) and candles; they didn't have gas service for lighting.That was why the Tennessee Valley Commission, with its hydroelectric dams, was such a big deal in the 1930s.

 

[AloneTooLong]

"I think all housing had indoor plumbing too, although there were "cold-water" flats until after World War II. Some of the oldest buildings still had shared bathrooms in the hallway. Single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings had shared bathrooms at least into the 1980s."

My grandmother (who was living in a small Texas town) in the late 40s-early 50s did NOT have indoor plumbing. She did have electricity though.

 

[SamScribble]

My grandmother (who was living in a small Texas town) in the late 40s-early 50s did NOT have indoor plumbing. She did have electricity though.

The farm house where I was born in the heart of The Cotswolds did not have indoor plumbing or electricity. We survived.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The farm house where I was born in the heart of The Cotswolds did not have indoor plumbing or electricity. We survived.

There's an Australian classic, The Outcasts of Foolgarah by Frank Hardy, which stars a bunch of dunny shit carters, set in Sydney in the sixties. The scene I remember best is Jesus Tinkler, the head of the union, undoing the flood gates on the sewage outfall, "Let 'er rip, boys, let the shit flow." Hardy was one of Oz's great communists, a real stirrer. The establishment hated him.

 

[Jada59]

"I think all housing had indoor plumbing too, although there were "cold-water" flats until after World War II. Some of the oldest buildings still had shared bathrooms in the hallway. Single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings had shared bathrooms at least into the 1980s."

My grandmother (who was living in a small Texas town) in the late 40s-early 50s did NOT have indoor plumbing. She did have electricity though.

My mom ws on a arm with no indoor plumbing.

 

[Jada59]

Yeah. That's just poor writing. You'd think the editor would have picked those errors up.

You would think so.

 

[Jada59]

Friend who works for a publisher says many genre books don't get edited any more. Especially when it's yet another misery-lit memoir or similar that they want to publish quickly before the trend dies off (indirectly killing off the trend as people start to associate it with crap books).

Having a present-day character be the grown-up historic character (with name change, plastic surgery, sex change, amnesia as needed) is a total cliché.

Wow.

 

[Jada59]

I don't know about Chicago, but I think almost all housing in New York had electricity by 1929. Gas lighting mostly ended around the First World War. My grandfather remembered gas lights from his childhood in the first decade of the 20th Century.

I think all housing had indoor plumbing too, although there were "cold-water" flats until after World War II. Some of the oldest buildings still had shared bathrooms in the hallway. Single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings had shared bathrooms at least into the 1980s.

Mechanical refrigerators were not common for working-class people until the 1940s. Most still had ice-boxes and had to rely on ice deliveries.

Rural areas were very different, of course, and many people did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. I suppose they relied on lamps (kerosene, maybe?) and candles; they didn't have gas service for lighting.That was why the Tennessee Valley Commission, with its hydroelectric dams, was such a big deal in the 1930s.

Thanks!