The Bereaved: A Novel

Julia Park Tracey

Mar 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Aven Shore

About this audiobook

Based on her research into her grandfather's past as an adopted child, Julia Park Tracey has created a mesmerizing work of historical fiction illuminating the darkest side of the Orphan Train. In 1859, women have few rights, even to their own children. When her husband dies and her children become wards of a predator, Martha-bereaved and scared-flees their beloved country home taking the children with her to the squalor of New York City. But as a naïve woman alone, preyed on by male employers, she soon finds herself nearly destitute. The Home for the Friendless offers free food, clothing, and schooling to New York's street kids and Martha secures a place temporarily for her children there. When she returns for them, she discovers that the Society has indentured her two eldest out to work via the Orphan Train, and has placed her two youngest for adoption. The Society refusing to help and with the Civil War erupting around her, Martha sets out to reclaim each of them.

About the author

Author Julia Park Tracey's ancestors and their stories have given her a trail to follow from New York and New England to the deep south and the Pacific Coast. She is the author or editor of six books and has written for Redbook, HuffPost, The Sun, Salon, and Babble.

Aven Shore lives in rural Eastern Canada in an off-grid tiny house she built on her large woodlot. Her lifelong (and voracious) appetite for reading and learning is constantly fueled by reading for a living, and she has narrated over 200 audiobooks.