By fierce determination and strength of character, she earns her place and comes to be valued and to feel at home. She stays true to her heritage and religious beliefs, but she knows that this is her only chance, and Annie's, and she must learn to accomodate. There are a good many peripheral characters, all of whom Holland brings into sharp focus, but it is Maggie who carries the novel. She is sustained by her strong sense of self, by all the good things that happen, and by the support of Priscilla Russell, her warm and gentle new mother who has an unshakable sense of right and wrong. Annie is a sunny, dreamy child it is Maggie who must come to grips with the newness, the loss of her mother, the fear of being sent back, the hard work, and the hostility of some toward Roman Catholics and Irish immigrants. Taken in by a childless couple, they begin a new life on the Kansas prairie, far different from all that they have known. Grade 4-6- After their mother dies, Maggie Lavin, 12, and her younger sister, Annie, leave the slums of New York City on one of the orphan trains that deliv ered thousands of tenement youngsters to adoptive homes during the second half of the 19th century.
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