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The Orphan Collector

By: Ellen Marie Wiseman
Narrated by: Rachel Botchan
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Publisher's Summary

Ellen Marie Wiseman, acclaimed author of What She Left Behind and The Life She Was Given, weaves the stories of two very different women into a thrilling novel as suspenseful as it is poignant, set amid one of history's deadliest pandemics. 

In the fall of 1918, 13-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia's overcrowded streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the US Army, hoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon, dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving her infant twin brothers alone....

Since her baby died days ago, Bernice Groves has been lost in grief and bitterness. If doctors hadn't been so busy tending to hordes of immigrants, perhaps they could have saved her son. When Bernice sees Pia leaving her tenement across the way, she is buoyed by a shocking, life-altering decision that leads her on a sinister mission: to transform the city's orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are "true Americans". 

As Pia navigates the city's somber neighborhoods, she cannot know that her brothers won't be home when she returns. And it will be a long and arduous journey to learn what happened - even as Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost. Only with persistence, and the courage to face her own shame and fear, will Pia put the pieces together and find the strength to risk everything to see justice at last.

©2020 Ellen Marie Wiseman (P)2020 Recorded Books

What listeners say about The Orphan Collector

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Powerful Story

Once you start listening, you can't stop. This story has everything, characters you love, characters you hate, characters that break your heart. Ellen Marie Wiseman holds nothing back in her writing. I think I have found a new favourite author. Rachel Botchan did a brilliant job narrating this story.

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Too much creative drama

I wanted to like this but it was too melodramatic for me: 1918 flu epidemic; punitive nuns; a sociopathic ‘nurse’ ‘cleaning up’ the streets. The story is of an orphan girl and her missing brothers. It was a good portrait of the Spanish Flu and its impact on a city. There was just a hint of modern sensibility about race which considering the hatred elsewhere seemed out of place. Thanks goodness there were some kind characters.

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Horrible narration put me off.

waited for the story to start. narration put me off entirely. inflections and pauses in all the wrong places.

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