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Fiction Historical

The Baby Train

by (author) Stella Shepard

Publisher
Acorn Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2024
Category
Historical, Feminist, Contemporary Women
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781773661681
    Publish Date
    Sep 2024
    List Price
    $24.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781773661698
    Publish Date
    Sep 2024
    List Price
    $68.85

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Description

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 My Dreams.

About the author

Stella Shepard of Prince Edward Island developed a passion for reading and writing in childhood that followed her throughout life. She is the author of Ashes of My Dreams (Acorn Press, 2016) and her stories have been published in four of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Atlantic newspapers, and magazines. Stella is a journalist, a life-long learner, and a photographer. She is a mother and a grandmother who lives on an organic farm with her husband, Reg Phelan.

Stella Shepard's profile page

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