Finished a great book today...

Well, I have been trying to decide whether to include surprises from books that I review or not in my reviews. How I hate to ruin endings of good books. That kills the element of surprise. However today, a friend called and asked my opinion on a book she had been reading and I thought to myself man, I wish I had written down the details down somewhere so that I would remember the story better! After so many stories, some of the elements blur together! It is such fun to discuss books with friends, however, we do not always read simultaneously and then these mishaps occur!!
Well, anyway, I finished a great book today. My Heart Remembers by Kim Vogel Sawyer. It was a story of three siblings who are orphaned during a tenement fire in NYC. The eldest, Maelle, has promised her father that she would take care of her siblings. She does not want to see them split up. But unfortunately after spending a short amount of time in the city's orphanage the three children are carted on to a train heading west, the orphan train. And inevitably the three children are split up to three different families. It was so hard to see this happen.
However, the story then jumps forward to approximately fifteen years later. The eldest, Maelle, a traveling photographer, is still hoping to be reuinted with her brother Mattie and sister Molly.
The story jumps points of view to each of the three children. You hear the story about the past fifteen or so years that you have missed. The remainder of the book is about the search for one another. The youngest Molly, however, has no memory of a past family.
I really enjoyed the fact that the story concentrated on the orphan trains and later child labor laws. It was very interesting yet sad to see the conditions that children were forced to work in. It was good to see good overcome evil in the fight to end such cruel conditions. It was also interesting to see the passion that the three siblings had for the movement because of their past experiences.
I enjoyed
Overall I found this to be a great book. There was even a little romance hidden inside. It was interesting to read the author's note and learn that the author's grandmother had rode on an orphan train. She also used her passion in later life to take care of 12 surrogate children after finding out she was unable to concieve children.
I definitely recommend and no I am not going to give away the ending!