Gingham Mountain by Mary Connealy

 Buy It Here

Hannah and Grant meet in this installment of Lassoed in Texas (#3). The main difference about this book and Calico Canyon(#2) is that this book talks about the orphan trains. Orphan trains thankfully, are a thing of the past where orphans were taken up to the end of the rail lines, if needed, to adopt them out. I loved Hannah for the way she thought about education.The angst starts immediately as Grant meets the orphan train to collect his new children not knowing that Hannah is following the children. Hannah immediately assumes that Grant is expecting 'slave' labor from the children. Although, they both have a huge heart for orphans, they each have seemingly polar opposite ways of caring for the kids.

Learning was the important thing. If only she could educate them so they'd never be forced into mill work or, because of illiteracy, have no prospects of any jobs. She believed giving them an education could be the difference between life and death for some of them. It might be the difference between keeping their own children or sending them off to orphanages. With a kind of desperate urgency, Hannah taught them words and numbers to put them one step further from the awful fate that could await the uneducated (italics mine).

I enjoyed this read for a different reason than my usual love for 'all things Mary Connealy' and that is the orphan trains. I'm sure I'd learned about them somewhere along the line as I love  american history. Mary, however, put names and faces on those kids for me though, which made them seem real and therefore more memorable. The social impact of illiteracy is just as important today as it was in any time before us. Thanks for another great read Mary!!!!!