The massive Orphan Train exodus whisked three-year-old Teresa from the safety of her New York orphanage, where the worst thing the Foundling nuns did was wash her curly black hair, to a desolate house and cold-hearted parents in Kansas.
Mail-Order Kid looks at the Orphan Train movement through the eyes of one small child who yearns to know her real mother, survives a tortured childhood, and ultimately, as an adult, comes to terms with her past, her faith, and herself..
Perhaps half a million children, like Teresa, were plucked from orphanages and shipped by rail (or relocated) to nearly every state in the Union from 1854 to 1929.
In this odd world, she encountered whippings and sexual abuse.
There she entered a small and strange Volga German world whose inhabitants spoke a language she had never heard.
The massive Orphan Train exodus whisked three-year-old Teresa from the safety of her New York orphanage, where the worst thing the Foundling nuns did was wash her curly black hair, to a desolate house and cold-hearted parents in Kansas
