$a You are about to embark on a wondrous voyage through time and culture. The journey carries you from the privileged world of Park Avenue to nineteenth-century Lithuania, turn-of-the-century Chicago, a contemporary Israeli kibbutz, and the timeless world of New York City's Lower East Side. Journey's end occurs in the Jewish year 5743 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, just crosstown and a lifetime away from where Paul Cowan's complicated, halting trip toward faith begins. Paul Cowan grows up unaware that he is a descendant of rabbis. In one generation five thousand years of religion and culture have been lost. Like millions of immigrant families, Lou and Polly Cowan pay for the prosperity with their pasts. When they die in a tragic fire, Paul begins a search for that part of his parents that had perished in America. The quest for an ancestral legacy by the American, Paul Cowan, becomes a rite of passage for the Jew who emerges Saul Cohen. Relatives like Jacob Cohen, the used cement bag dealer, and Modie Spiegel, Sr., the mail order magnate, come to life in the author's warm and touching recreation of an odyssey through immigrant America. - Jacket flap.

"Describes the people and events involved in the orphan trains. The reader's choices reveal the historical details from the perspectives of a New York City newsboy, a child trying to keep his siblings together, and a child sent west on the baby trains"--Provided by publisher.

This history of the nation’s first orphanage for African American children, founded in New York City nearly two centuries ago. This book uncovers the history of the Colored Orphan Asylum, founded in 1836. Through three wars, two major financial panics, a devastating fire during the 1863 Draft Riots, several epidemics, waves of racial prejudice, and severely strained budgets, it cared for orphaned, neglected, and delinquent children, eventually receiving financial support from such renowned New York families as the Jays, Murrays, Roosevelts, Macys, and Astors. While the white female managers and their male advisers were dedicated to uplifting these children, the evangelical, mainly Quaker founding managers also exhibited the extreme paternalistic views endemic at the time, accepting advice or support from the African American community only grudgingly. It was frank criticism in 1913 from W.E.B. Du Bois that highlighted the conflict between the orphanage and the community it served, and it wasn’t until 1939 that it hired the first black trustee. More than 15,000 children were raised in the orphanage, and throughout its history letters and visits have revealed that hundreds if not thousands of “old boys and girls” looked back with admiration and respect at the home that nurtured them throughout their formative years. Weaving together African American history with a unique history of New York City, this is not only a painstaking study of a previously unsung institution but a unique window onto complex racial dynamics during a period when many failed to recognize equality among all citizens as a worthy purpose. In its current incarnation as Harlem-Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services, it continues to aid children (albeit not as an orphanage)—and maintains the principles of the women who organized it so long ago. “Scholars and general readers interested in New York history, race relations, social services, [or] philanthropy . . . will benefit from this work.”?Social Sciences Reviews

Founded in 1860, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York was the oldest, largest, and best-known Jewish orphanage in the United States until its closing in 1941. This book, the first history of an orphanage ever published, tells the story of the HOA's development from a nineteenth-century institution into a model twentieth-century child-care facility. Because of the humane and benevolent attitude of the New York Jewish community toward its orphans, the harsh authoritarianism and Dickensian conditions typical of contemporary orphanages were gradually replaced there by a nurturing approach that looked after the religious, social, and personal needs of the children. Though primarily an instrument of social control, the HOA was also an expression of Jewish ethnicity. Its history is set in a larger context that includes the life and character of the New York Jewish community, the city's immigrant population, the social and economic conditions of the time, the child-saving efforts of other groups, and the debate over institutional versus foster care. Drawing from HOA archives, published sources, and his personal experience as a resident from 1932 to 1941, Hyman Bogen brings a unique perspective to child-saving efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His compelling tale portrays daily life for those who lived and worked in such institutions. He illustrates how an enlightened orphanage, rather than crushing the spirit of its young residents, can help children to gain self-esteem and become secure adults. Bogen's tale will be of particular interest to urban and social historians, to city and government officials, and to social workers, as well as to anyone concerned with thegrowing crisis in child-care options.

⭐ Don’t miss the new uplifting historical saga series from Molly Green, set at famous Bletchley Park: Summer Secrets at Bletchley Park – available to pre-order now! ⭐ War rages, but the women and children of Liverpool’s Dr Barnardo’s Home cannot give up hope. A gripping saga about love and loss on the Home Front.

"In The Charleston Orphan House, distinguished economic historian John E. Murray uncovers a world about which previous generations of scholars knew next to nothing: the world of orphaned children in early national and antebellum America. Employing a unique cache of records, Murray offers a sensitive and sympathetic account of the history of the institution - the first public orphan house in the US - while at the same time making it clear that Charleston's beneficence toward white orphans was inextricably linked to the racial ideology of the city's leaders. In Murray's hands, the voices of poor white families in early America are heard as never before." -- Peter A Coclanis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. -- Book jacket.

"From 1850 to 1930 America witnessed a unique emigration and resettlement of at least 200,000 children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This 'placing out,' an attempt to find homes for the urban poor, was best known by the 'orphan trains' that carried the children. Holt carefully analyzes the system, initially instituted by the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853, tracking its imitators as well as the reasons for its creation and demise. She captures the children's perspective with the judicious use of oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts. This well-written volume sheds new light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion. It is good, scholarly social history."—Library Journal

Instant New York Times bestseller! Inspired by the real-life heroine who saved thousands of Jewish children during WWII, The Warsaw Orphan is Kelly Rimmer’s most anticipated novel since her bestselling sensation, The Things We Cannot Say. “Gripping… This one easily stands on its own.” —Publishers Weekly “Heart-stopping.” – Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author “A surefire hit.” – Kristin Harmel, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality--and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending Sara, a nurse who shares her apartment floor, Elzbieta makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism. Using Sara's credentials to smuggle children out of the ghetto brings Elzbieta face-to-face with the reality of the war behind its walls, and to the plight of the Gorka family, who must make the impossible decision to give up their newborn daughter or watch her starve. For Roman Gorka, this final injustice stirs him to rebellion with a zeal not even his newfound love for Elzbieta can suppress. But his recklessness brings unwanted attention to Sara's cause, unwittingly putting Elzbieta and her family in harm's way until one violent act threatens to destroy their chance at freedom forever. From Nazi occupation to the threat of a communist regime, The Warsaw Orphan is the unforgettable story of Elzbieta and Roman's perilous attempt to reclaim the love and life they once knew. Don’t miss Kelly Rimmer’s next historical suspense, The Paris Agent, coming July 2023! For more by Kelly Rimmer, look for: Before I Let You Go The Things We Cannot Say Truths I Never Told You The German Wife

In 1904, New York nuns brought forty Irish orphans to a remote Arizona mining camp, to be placed with Catholic families. The Catholic families were Mexican, as was the majority of the population. Soon the town's Anglos, furious at this "interracial" transgression, formed a vigilante squad that kidnapped the children and nearly lynched the nuns and the local priest. The Catholic Church sued to get its wards back, but all the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the vigilantes. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction tells this disturbing and dramatic tale to illuminate the creation of racial boundaries along the Mexican border. Clifton/Morenci, Arizona, was a "wild West" boomtown, where the mines and smelters pulled in thousands of Mexican immigrant workers. Racial walls hardened as the mines became big business and whiteness became a marker of superiority. These already volatile race and class relations produced passions that erupted in the "orphan incident." To the Anglos of Clifton/Morenci, placing a white child with a Mexican family was tantamount to child abuse, and they saw their kidnapping as a rescue. Women initiated both sides of this confrontation. Mexican women agreed to take in these orphans, both serving their church and asserting a maternal prerogative; Anglo women believed they had to "save" the orphans, and they organized a vigilante squad to do it. In retelling this nearly forgotten piece of American history, Linda Gordon brilliantly recreates and dissects the tangled intersection of family and racial values, in a gripping story that resonates with today's conflicts over the "best interests of the child."

Look for Pam Jenoff’s new novel, The Woman with the Blue Star, an unforgettable story of courage and friendship during wartime. A New York Times bestseller! “Readers who enjoyed Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants will embrace this novel. “ —Library Journal “Secrets, lies, treachery, and passion…. I read this novel in a headlong rush.” —Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train A powerful novel of friendship set in a traveling circus during World War II, The Orphan’s Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival. Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep… When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night. Noa finds refuge with a German circus, but she must learn the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond. But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their friendship is enough to save one another—or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything. Don’t miss Pam Jenoff’s new novel, Code Name Sapphire, a riveting tale of bravery and resistance during World War II. Read these other sweeping epics from New York Times bestselling author Pam Jenoff: The Woman with the Blue Star The Lost Girls of Paris The Ambassador’s Daughter The Diplomat’s Wife The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach The Kommandant’s Girl The Winter Guest