Orphan Train: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

On her first night, Mr. Grote tells Niamh (still going by “Dorothy”) she can either sleep with the children or on the couch – except that he often sleeps there. Niamh decides to sleep with the children in a room with bare mattresses and old blankets. The house has no running water or electricity. Niamh soon realizes that Wilma Grote barely gets out of bed and that she and Mr. Grote pay little attention to their children’s needs. When the children try to sleep by their mother, she sometimes lets them and sometimes “pushes them away,” causing them to “wail.” Mrs. Grote mostly ignores Niamh; meanwhile, the children begin to warm to her as their caretaker, especially 2-year-old Gerald Jr. Mr. Grote tells Niamh he requested her because his wife “wouldn’t get out of bed and he didn’t know what else to do.” Niamh feels “abandoned” and “dropped into misery.”

Mr. Grote tells Niamh that his goal is to be “self-sufficient” so that he doesn’t have to work again. He fishes and hunts and keeps a goat, some plants, chickens, and a mule on his land. Their car is broken down, but he walks or rides his mule on the rare occasion that he needs to go into “town.” He doesn’t believe in government, but says he will send Niamh to school to avoid problems with the “authorities.”

Niamh rises early on her first day of school. With heated water from the outside pump, she washes herself the best she can without a bath. She feels cheerful and plays with the children. On her walk to the school-bus stop, she realizes for the first time how beautiful the forest is. Mr. Post, who helps run the school, collects her and the other country children (of all ages) and drives them to the schoolhouse in his truck. The teacher, Miss Larsen, is pretty and kind. She keeps soap and clean rags in the indoor bathroom for the children who need them. Miss Larsen offers to call Niamh by her real name, but Niamh decides to be called “Dorothy.” She does well on her reading test, and Miss Larsen gives her a copy of Anne of Green Gables. At recess, Niamh is thrilled to play with the other children. When Mr. Post drops her off, her “footsteps are slow.”

At first, the food Mr. Grote brings home disgusts Niamh: lots of squirrel meat and some “whiskery” fish, wild turkeys, and deer. But her hunger forces her to overcome her “qualms,” and soon she is cooking squirrel stews. She spends many difficult hours helping Mr. Grote dig up root vegetables from the still-frozen ground, and he teaches her how to plant rice from seeds in the stream. On her birthday, Miss Larsen surprises Niamh with a party and a loaf of Irish currant cake, baked for Niamh by Miss Larsen’s landlady. Niamh’s happiness brings tears into her eyes as she asks: “For me?” The cake “tastes like Ireland” and reminds her of her Gram’s kitchen. That night, Mr. Grote calls birthdays “ridiculous,” saying that he can’t remember his own or his children’s birthdays, just before helping himself to a piece of the cake Niamh brought home.