The Forsaken Children by Naomi Finley ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

 

𝐀 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.

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March 2021; Huntson Press; 978-1989165348
ebook, print (306 pages); historical fiction

It's 1921 in England.  There are many impoverished children living on the streets of London.  Most of them have lost their parents and are on their own trying to get food and shelter.  British organizations sent more than 100,000 children from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa with the hope of a better life for them.  This novel is the story of several children sent from the streets of London to Canada.

Hazel is 15 and very protective of her brother William who is 6.  Their mother takes them to an orphanage until she can get enough money so that they can find food and shelter.   The orphanage assures her that she'll be able to get her children back.  What they don't tell her is her children will be shipped to Canada as soon as there is room available.  When the children arrived in Canada, they were separated and sent to different distribution houses.  The house that Hazel is sent to is ruled by a mean woman whose goal is to get the children to families in need without ever following up on their situations that they get placed into.   Hazel is sent to a farm where she is treated like a slave, forced to work without proper food, and often mistreated.  Her only hope is that somehow she will be able to get out of her bad situation, find her brother, and return home to find their mother.  When she finds out that the girl who was there before her was killed, she begins to wonder if she'll ever get out of there alive.

The Foresaken Children was about a subject that I knew nothing about.  This forced childhood emigration took place from 1869 until the late 1930s.  The plan was that these children would be adopted into a family filled with love but often these children were treated as slave labor until they aged out at 18.  Hazel is a wonderful main character.  She loves and protects her mother and brother as best she can and even when she is put into a bad situation, she is brave and resilient.  It was apparent that the author did extensive research on this forced emigration and was able to write an excellent novel about it.  I am looking forward to the next book in this series.

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Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina with her husband of over 50 years.  She grew up in Michigan but now calls North Carolina home. Since her travel plans had to be canceled for this year, she is starting to make plans for travel in 2021. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and historical fiction. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter.

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