The baby train
General fiction, Historical fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
Thrust into the foster care system from an early age, Apple moves from house to house on Prince Edward Island without finding a home until she's a teenager and taken in by a couple who never managed to have children… themselves. When she falls pregnant, her foster parents are keen to raise the baby with Apple still in the house—to live as a family. That opportunity is torn from Apple by members of the Catholic Church along with social workers and government officials. Their vicious practices take the babies of unwed mothers and give them to wealthy families in exchange for large "donations" to the church. Apple's beloved baby ends up with a rich couple in the U.S., and is lost to her. The Baby Train traces her life in the aftermath of that loss, raising subsequent children, creating deep bonds of friendship with other women struggling against society's rigid norms, and carrying underneath it all an unending love for her firstborn child. We also follow her baby's path, and watch his affluent, neglected childhood and then adulthood unfold. He never knows that his birth mother still yearns for him, still lights him birthday candles every year. The shameful legacy of forced and coerced adoption in Eastern Canada is brought to life in this sweeping sequel to Ashes of Our Dreams