The Accidental Orphan

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Winnipeg,
Manitoba.

Selling flowers on the Liverpool docks in 1885 to help support herself
and Uncle Bert, 11-year-old Ellen Winter becomes an unwitting
participant in thievery. She manages to escape capture but finds herself
trapped with seven orphans on board the ship Lake Superior, bound for
Canada. Ellen insists she is not an orphan, a “workhouse brat.”
Nevertheless, the Toronto Society for the Placement of Deserving
Orphans, while promising to try contacting Uncle Bert, sends her to the
Aitkens’ family farm in Patterson, Manitoba.

Farm life holds little appeal for city-bred Ellen, but she does try to
master the tasks and chores assigned her. Nineteenth-century orphans had
few rights and often found themselves in abusive situations or subjected
to cruelty and ridicule. The Aitkens treat Ellen well, but her driving
ambition remains to return to Uncle Bert, especially after she finally
hears from him. While circumstances prevent her from going to England,
they do not prevent Uncle Bert from coming to Canada. In the end, Ellen
must choose between her blood family and the Aitkens.

Horne sketches a rich portrait of life on a prairie farm. Ellen quickly
learns that “there’s always work to do on a farm, plenty of work.”
The contrast between her comfortable life with the Aitkens and that of
less-fortunate orphans like abused George shows young readers how
precarious life could be for children in the 1880s. Recommended.