THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR:
A Heroic Novel of Survival During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
Ellen Marie Wiseman
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Kensington Books
8/4/2020
Historical Fiction
Paperback, 304 pages
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"Wiseman's blistering moving and profound novel, set against the devastating backdrop of the 1918 Spanish flu, hones in on an extraordinary exploration of the plight of immigrants, as two very different women grapple with finding, keeping, and changing their place in the world. Absolutely amazing.”
—author Caroline Leavitt
"Wiseman’s writing is superb, and her descriptions of life during the Spanish Flu epidemic are chilling...Well-researched and impossible to put down, this is an emotional tug-of-war played out brilliantly on the pages and in readers’ hearts.”
-Historical Novels Review, Editor’s Choice
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The Orphan Collector is a gripping and powerful tale of upheaval—a heartbreaking saga of resilience and hope perfect for fans of Beatriz Williams and Kristin Hannah—set in Philadelphia during the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak—the deadly pandemic that went on to infect one-third of the world’s population.
In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded slums and the anti-immigrant sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army. But as her city celebrates the end of the war, an even more urgent threat arrives: the Spanish flu. Funeral crepe and quarantine signs appear on doors as victims drop dead in the streets and desperate survivors wear white masks to ward off illness. When food runs out in the cramped tenement she calls home, Pia must venture alone into the quarantined city in search of supplies, leaving her baby brothers behind.
Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans".
Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum – the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice – and love – triumph at last.
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Dear Reader,
I was inspired to write The Orphan Collector after a reader asked if I’d ever heard of the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, a pandemic that killed more people than any other illness in recorded history, including the 14th century’s Black Death and AIDS in the 20th century. I was amazed and inspired by the stories she told me about the brave nurses who risked their lives visiting homes during that time, sometimes finding all members of a family had perished, or both parents dead and the children starving.
While I was researching the 1918 pandemic and writing The Orphan Collector, it was inconceivable to me that another powerful virus would once again bring the world to its knees. Yet here we are in the summer of 2020 when words like “social distancing,” “quarantine,” “face mask,” and “ventilators” are a part of daily conversation. But I’m praying hard that by the time you read this, we’re closer to coming out on the other side of this difficult together, more resilient, more compassionate, and stronger than ever.
The Orphan Collector tells the story of a young German immigrant, Pia Lange, struggling to keep her family together at a time when more Americans were dying in our nation’s streets and homes than on the battlefields of World War I. It’s also about a grieving mother, Bernice Groves, who uses her hatred of immigrants as an excuse to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable. I hope you will be drawn to Pia’s resiliency, courage, and determination in the face of impossible odds, even when shame and fear threaten to swallow her whole. I also hope Bernice’s story will remind readers that empathy for others, no matter their race, nationality, or religion, is always the right choice.
Take care,
Ellen Marie Wiseman
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THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR BOOK CLUB MENU
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The Orphan Collector takes place during World War I when United States citizens were strongly encouraged to forgo certain ingredients to help win the war. In place of wheat, people use corn, oats, barley, and other wheat substitutes. Hoover Cornbread was named after Herbert Hoover, the director of the Food Administration at that time. But for Pia, the poor German immigrant who must take care of her twin baby brothers after her mother dies from the Spanish flu, “going without” is a way of life.
When she reads the newspaper article her father tacked to the kitchen wall to remind his family to sacrifice by observing “Meatless Mondays” and “Wheatless Wednesdays” before he joined the army, she can’t remember the last time her family had meat. She’s tired of eating potatoes but I think she would have enjoyed Potato Waffles if her family had been able to afford the milk and sugar needed to make them. Another treat she would have enjoyed was Popcorn Balls made with molasses and sugar. And if she’d had the ingredients to make War Cake, which was more like sweet bread with raisins, cinnamon, and nutmeg, she wouldn’t have been forced to leave her brothers behind to search the quarantined city for food.
Of course, when Pia is bound out from the orphanage to work for the Hudson family, she tastes marmalade for the first time, as well as barley biscuits, cranberry tapioca, plum pudding, and fruit farina.
—Ellen Marie Wiseman
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