Mother Of Orphans

"Mother of Orphans is the compelling true story of Alice, an Irish-American woman who defied rigid social structures to form a family with a black man in Ohio in 1899. Alice and her husband had three children together, but after his death in 1912, Alice mysteriously surrendered her children to an orphanage. One hundred years later, her great-grand daughter, Dedria Humphries Barker, went in search of the reasons behind this mysterious abandonment, hoping in the process to resolve aspects of her own conflicts with American racial segregation and conflict. This book is the fruit of Barker's quest. In it, she turns to memoir, biography, historical research, and photographs to unearth the fascinating history of a multiracial community in the Ohio River Valley during the early twentieth century.... Part personal journey, part cultural biography, Mother of Orphans examines a little-known piece of this country's past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage."--Amazon.com, viewed April 17, 2020.

An epic account of one remarkable woman's quest for justice from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow of the South and A Separate Country. In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock--the "Widow of the South"--has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee. But when her ambitious, politically minded grown son, Theopolis, is murdered, Mariah--no stranger to loss--finds her world once more breaking apart. How could this happen? Who wanted him dead? Mariah's journey to uncover the truth leads her to unexpected people--including George Tole, a recent arrival to town, fleeing a difficult past of his own--and forces her to confront the truths of her own past. Brimming with the vivid prose and historical research that has won Robert Hicks recognition as a "master storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle)./DIV

An inspiring story of one woman's survival and her part in God's work in Africa Annie Chikhwaza grew up in Holland. In struggling to come to terms with her abuse as a child, she tried to commit suicide but was dramatically converted through the ministry of Brother Andrew. She then began to minister, first to the poor and marginalized on the streets of Amsterdam and then in the volatile townships of South Africa during the height of the apartheid era. After surviving an abusive marriage and the turmoil and humiliation of divorce, she married a poor African pastor and went to Malawi to start an orphanage. Today Annie has nearly two hundred children in her care, many of whom are HIV positive, and she has built a small town called Kondanani ("Love one another"), which boasts a care facility, several children's homes, a nursery school, primary school, and farm. Kondanani is an oasis of love in a country with more than one million orphans. It has attracted the attention of the media around the world and a host of celebrities, including Madonna, who has adopted one of Kondanani's children. Annie's story, told here for the first time, shares her many terrible trials: abuse, abortion, a broken back, attempted murder, the loss of everything she had built, attempted rape, and the death of her beloved husband. Her story might have been one of bitterness and anger; instead, Annie uses each trial to point to God's love for her and for every one of His creation.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition—and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.

Jails, hospitals, and strip joints; the celebrations of straight-A report cards, graduations, and Congressional honors - as the children demonstrate their humor, hope, and resilience in trying to overcome their society's failure.

The historical adult debut novel by # 1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Kate, The Orphan's Song is a breathtaking story of passion, heartbreak, and betrayal, and a celebration of the enduring nature and transformative power of love. "A tangled knot of betrayal and love, lies and redemption. Marvelous." --Fiona Davis, author of The Address A song brought them together. A secret will tear them apart. When Violetta and Mino meet, one finds true love and the other denies it. Both orphans at the Hospital of the Incurables in Venice, an orphanage and music conservatory, they meet and make music together clandestinely until Violetta is selected for the Incurables' renowned chorus. In order to join she signs an oath never to sing beyond the church doors, effectively sequestering herself for life. Mino flees, heartbroken. Too late, Violetta realizes what she has lost. In rebellion she begins a dangerous and forbidden nightlife, unknowingly drawing closer to Mino as he searches Venice for his long-lost mother. Mino and Violetta must each journey through passion, heartache, and betrayal before a dangerous secret reunites them, leading to a shocking and final confrontation.

“Children have the right to be happy. So God sent me to help them.” —Sister Maria Rosa Leggol In Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, in 1966, a short, plump, middle-aged Catholic nun was hot on the heels of the richest man in the country. Sister María Rosa Leggol, a hospital nurse with a fifth-grade education, had no money, no social standing, no clout. What she did have was the audacity to ask big favors of powerful men and the unwavering conviction that her dream—to rescue, house, and educate street children—was sanctioned by God. She also had the gall to think she could stop the man’s airplane from taking off. The help she received that day triggered a dramatic chain of events resulting in the rescue and education of tens of thousands of destitute children in the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Through her network of children’s villages, schools, farms, clinics, vocational training centers, and microbusinesses, this indomitable nun empowered poor Hondurans to live, grow, and work with dignity. Madre is a celebration of a fearless woman’s great goodness, charisma, and chutzpah in challenging corruption and machismo to break generational cycles of poverty. Writer and mission trip leader Kathy Martin O’Neil sets the unlikely triumphs of this “Angel of the Poor” against the backdrop of Honduras’s deprivation, broken families, and gang violence that send desperate young migrants fleeing for their lives. Drawing from more than a decade of mission travel to SAN, she captures Sister Maria Rosa’s magnetic allure and Franciscan wisdom on how best to change hearts and stand with the marginalized people of the world. Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodriguez of Honduras, who is advancing her cause for sainthood, introduces his friend, Sister María Rosa Leggol, in a beautiful Foreword.

Based on a true story, this debut Civil War novel follows a Southern plantation woman's journey of transforming her home into a hospital for the war. This debut novel is based on the true story of Carrie McGavock. During the Civil War's Battle of Franklin, a five-hour bloodbath with 9,200 casualties, McGavock's home was turned into a field hospital where four generals died. For 40 years she tended the private cemetery on her property where more than 1,000 were laid to rest.

This is a true story from deepest Africa. In 1954 a healthy baby girl is born in unusual circumstances and her mother dies, never regaining consciousness. Neither is able to make even the briefest eye contact with the other despite having been as one for nine months. The little girl's father, distraught at his wife's death, cannot bear to take his daughter home and she is left in the care of the hospital authorities. She is technically an orphan, and officially becomes one, when her father dies 5 years later. During this 5 year period the father remarries and makes amends by taking the young girl home and bonding with her and, in this brief period, they grow to love each other. However, the stepmother feels no affinity towards her and a fractious relationship between the two females descends into real hate. This is exacerbated by the fact that, in Nigeria, the girl is considered to be a witch and, worse, the murderer of her mother. She must work for anyone but belongs to no-one and is fed, accommodated, and educated only on the whim of numerous relatives, aunties, uncles, and the grandfathers whom she loves the most. But when the grandfathers die she is cast into the abyss of African custom and predatory males and, while developing great beauty, builds incredible tactics and defences to enable her to survive, against the odds. Ironically, she is saved by a brutal war when, at the tender age of 13, she becomes a child soldier spy and an active service heroine to her comrades, who reward this by discharging her after wrongly accusing her of being a saboteur (turncoat) following her capture and torture by the enemy. This war, so detrimental to most of the population of Biafra, finally shapes her future and, surviving where a million have died, she goes on to struggle through many more adversities (complicated by a web of pagan beliefs, superstition, Christianity and the vestiges of colonialism) to find temporary security on many occasions, but inevitably returning to the seemingly unequal contest. Five well-balanced and variously successful children will testify that their place in the world was fashioned by the dedication, love and sense of purpose of this extraordinary woman. But it doesn't end there.....

A novel of love and political upheaval, in which “Kathmandu is as specific and heartfelt as Joyce’s Dublin” (San Francisco Chronicle). In Buddha’s Orphans, Nepal’s political upheavals of the past century serve as a backdrop to the story of an orphan boy, Raja, and the girl he is fated to love, Nilu, a daughter of privilege. Their love scandalizes both of their families—and the novel takes readers across the globe and through several generations. This engrossing, unconventional love story explores the ways that events of the past, even those we are ignorant of, inevitably haunt the present. It is also a brilliant depiction of Nepali society from the Whiting Award–winning author of Arresting God in Kathmandu. “[Upadhyay is] a Buddhist Chekhov.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Upadhyay . . . [illuminates] the shadow corners of his characters’ psyches, as well as the complex social and political realities of life in Nepal, with equal grace.” —Elle “[Upadhyay’s] characters linger. They are captured with such concise, illuminating precision that one begins to feel that they just might be real.” —The Christian Science Monitor “Absorbing . . . Beautifully told.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review