This novel follows two separate strands - one historical and one contemporary - and I was quite surprised to like both relatively equally. Very often in books like this I find myself with a strong preference towards one storyline, but both were compelling here. Partly, I think, because they've been so carefully constructed to mirror each other. This has the advantage of underlining thematic and character beats, but it can come across, in places, as a little pat. Because of this, towards the end of the book I was slightly suspicious that Vivian and Molly would turn out to be related - I was very glad to be wrong. That would have taken it from "a little pat" to overly indulgent; I also liked that Molly's own story is somewhat open-ended. 

The most interesting thing here for me, though, was learning about the orphan trains. I'd never heard of them before, and the sheer scale of the operation was really quite shocking.