You Belong Here Now - Dianna Rostad

You Belong Here Now, Dianna Rostad’s debut novel, is a story about three children who ride the Orphan Train from New York to Montana in 1925 only to reach the end of the line still not having been chosen by anyone looking for children to bring into their homes. Stop after stop, they find themselves having to re-board the train hoping that it will go differently for them on the next train platform they come to. But Charles is too big, little Olive is too scrawny and refuses to talk, and Patrick just seems to be too Irish to suit the locals. 

The three have little in common other than their determination not to end up back in New York City, but when Charles and Patrick decide to jump off the slow-moving train together before it reaches its last stop in Montana, Olive refuses to be left behind. And now the three of them are on foot in what seems to them to be the middle of nowhere. That’s when Charles decides to steal a horse from the family ranch they finally come across, figuring that wherever they are going, riding is a whole lot easier than walking. 

This, though, is not just any family ranch. It is one in the process of dying right along with what’s left of the family that owns it. Nara, the spinster who runs the ranch along with her aging father now that her brother has made a new life for himself in New York, doesn’t think about the future much. She knows that her father is slowing down, but working from dawn to dusk - and beyond when necessary - is the only life she knows, and she can’t imagine anything else. After she catches Charles trying to steal one of her horses, she only reluctantly agree with her father to let the boy work off his crime on the ranch rather than turning him over to the sheriff. But  even after Nara’s mother falls in love with tiny Olive immediately upon setting eyes on her, Nara is determined to work the two boys so hard that they can’t wait to get away from the ranch for good.

You Belong Here Now covers a lot of ground. Some will call it a triple coming-of-age novel, but it is much more than that. It is also a novel about decades-old grudges with the power to destroy those who hold them, racial prejudice, the power of family ties, bonding, love, and bottom-line justice. It is the story of six people who learn just how much they mean to each other, and that real families do not necessarily share the same blood. And as Nara learns: 

“…justice doesn’t come about through rules of law, but rather it rises from the courage of just one person. Someone who yields to the better judgement of their heart. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a nobody, a somebody, or a big shot, so long as they have the temerity to put one finger on the scales.”

Sometimes, in order to achieve justice, laws simply have to be ignored.

Bottom Line: Historical fiction about the Orphan Trains is not uncommon these days, but it is a story that deserves to be told. It can be argued that many of the orphans sent  west from America’s big cities were abused and otherwise overworked and exploited by the people who took them in, but it can also be argued that many, hopefully the vast majority, of the children were given better lives than the ones they left behind. You Belong Here Now tells part of that story. The novel did leave me with the impression that it is as much a YA novel as one for adults, so I recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more about the period in general and about the Orphan Train in particular. 

Dianna Rostad

Review Copy provided by Publisher for Review - novel to be published on April 21, 2021