The Red Caboose-An Orphan's Journey

Book excerpt: In 1960, Jeanette Van Zanten, a three-year-old girl from Sharon, Pennsylvania tragically loses her father to death. When her mother is unable to care for her and her six siblings, the family is uprooted from a family farm and relocated to Mooseheart, an orphanage in Illinois. Upon arrival to Mooseheart, the siblings are separated from one another and scattered to halls throughout the grounds of the orphanage where they at the mercy of strict matrons. Jeanette creatively adapts to the rigid lifestyle filled with rules and regulations, but never loses hope that someday she will be free. Once she attains her desired freedom and is on her own, she resiliently readjusts to life outside the orphanage and perilously navigates her way through adolescence into adulthood.