Niamh walks to the local schoolhouse and sleeps on the porch. Grote kick Niamh out into the cold winter night. Niamh hates the squalor and neglect at Wilma and Gerald Grotes’ household. Sorenson, a Children’s Aid worker, takes Niamh to the home of the Grotes, a poor rural family with four children. After the stock market plummets, the Byrnes request to have “Dorothy” relocated. Byrne change her name to “Dorothy.” The Byrnes neglect and deprive Niamh, all the while exploiting her for free labor in their ladies’ garment business. In Albans, Minnesota, Niamh is taken home by Lois and Raymond Byrne. Just before Dutchy goes home with a farmer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he and Niamh promise to find each other again someday. They take Niamh to the Children’s Aid Society, and the agency sends Niamh out to the Midwest on an “orphan train.” On the train, Niamh befriends Dutchy, a twelve-year-old boy, and takes care of Carmine, a toddler. Schatzman, tell her that her sister Maisie died in the hospital. After the incident her mother is committed to a mental hospital. One night, there is a house fire that kills Niamh’s father and brothers. In New York, Niamh’s depressed mother and alcoholic father struggle to provide for their children. Two years before, Niamh and her family emigrated from Kinvara in County Galway, Ireland. The novel’s parallel storyline begins in 1929 and features Vivian’s life story as Niamh Power, a nine-year-old girl who lives in New York with her father, Patrick, her mother, Mary, her younger twin brothers, James and Dominick, and her baby sister, Maisie. The only catch is that Terry and Jack have lied to Vivian, telling her that Molly’s community service hours are for a school project. Despite her anxiety around letting Jack help her, Molly agrees because she is afraid of being sent to juvenile detention or being kicked out by Ralph and Dina. Her boyfriend, Jack, arranges for her to fulfill her hours by helping Vivian Daly, the elderly, lonely woman his mother Terry housekeeps for, to clean out her cluttered attic. Molly’s only link to her parents is the charm necklace her father gave her for her eighth birthday.Īfter stealing a library copy of Jane Eyre, Molly is sentenced to fifty community service hours. Molly’s father died in a car accident when she was eight years old, and her mother, Donna Ayer, was soon jailed for charges related to drug abuse. As the novel progresses, it is revealed that Molly grew up on Indian Island, a Penobscot reservation. Even though Dina constantly criticizes Molly for her liberal opinions and “goth” self-presentation, Molly knows that Ralph and Dina give her a better, safer home than many of her previous foster families.
Molly Ayer is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives with her foster parents, Ralph and Dina Thibodeaus, in the town of Spruce Harbor, Maine.
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