The Orphan Collector

Ellen Marie Wiseman,acclaimed author of What She Left Behind and The Life She Was Givenweaves the stories of two very different women into a page-turning novel as suspenseful as it is poignantset amid one of history’s deadliest pandemics. In the fall of 1918thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded streets and slumsand from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Armyhoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soondead and dying are everywhere. With no food at homePia must venture out in search of suppliesleaving her infant twin brothers alone . . . Since her baby died days agoBernice Groves has been lost in grief and bitterness. If doctors hadn’t been so busy tending to hordes of immigrantsperhaps they could have saved her son. When Bernice sees Pia leaving her tenement across the wayshe is buoyed by a shockinglife-altering decision that leads her on a sinister mission: to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are \