The Orphan Collector

Summary

Ellen Marie Wiseman, acclaimed author of What She Left Behind and The Life She Was Given, weaves the
stories of two very different women into a page-turning novel as suspenseful as it is poignant, set amid one of
history’s deadliest pandemics.
In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded
streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army, hoping
to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon,
dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving her infant
twin brothers alone …
Since her baby died days ago, Bernice Groves has been lost in grief and bitterness. If doctors hadn’t been so busy
tending to hordes of immigrants, perhaps they could have saved her son. When Bernice sees Pia leaving her tenement
across the way, she is buoyed by a shocking, life-altering decision that leads her on a sinister mission: to transform the
city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.”
As Pia navigates the city’s somber neighborhoods, she cannot know that her brothers won’t be home when she
returns. And it will be a long and arduous journey to learn what happened—even as Bernice plots to keep the truth
hidden at any cost. Only with persistence, and the courage to face her own shame and fear, will Pia put the pieces
together and find the strength to risk everything to see justice at last.