Al Lacy has written more than ninety historical and western novels, including many that were co-authored with his wife, Joanna Lacy.The Little Sparrows is part of The Orphan Train Trilogy and is interspersed with many insights into the history of the orphan trains that originated in New York.
From the cover:
Immigrants flood into New York City by the thousands - the squalid streets home to thirty thousand destitute vagrant children. Moved with compassion for their plight, seminarian Charles Loring Brace founds the children's aid society in 19853 and for the next seven decades transports trainloads of orphans to farms and ranches on the American frontier.
Mary, Johnny, and Lizzie Marston, along with sixty other children, line the platform at the Cheyenne train station as Dan and Clara Forbes and other locals contemplate taking one child home to a new life. Will they be separated? Will they be wanted? Will the West offer a better life than the one they left behind or worse?
This was an interesting story, and although I like books with a Christian background, I found the book peppered with conversations about Christianity that seemed forced into the dialog rather than flowing freely. I may just be in a reading funk at the moment because I haven't picked up a book I've enjoyed lately. Although the story was good, the conversations and dialog seemed unnatural and failed to draw me in.
I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read any of these books and what you think of them.
