Orphan Train: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1939–Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

by Christina Baker Kline
Christina Baker Kline's historical novel follows two young women searching for a sense of belonging: Molly, a teen navigating the foster system in 2011, and Niamh, an Irish immigrant orphaned on the cusp of the Great Depression. Discover how their lives intersect as you learn these words from Orphan Train.

Here are links to our other lists for the novel: Prologue–Milwaukee Road Depot, Minneapolis, 1929; Albans, Minnesota, 1929–Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011; Hemingford County, Minnesota, 1930–Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011; Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1939–Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011
40 words 200 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. destination
    the place designated as the end, as of a race or journey
    My trips with the Nielsens are controlled, unambitious outings—a silent car ride, a specific destination, a sleepy ride home in the dark, Mr. Nielsen sitting erect in the front seat, Mrs. Nielsen beside him keeping a watchful eye on the center line.
  2. grant
    let have
    When she returns to Kansas—her heartfelt wish granted—the world is black and white again. “It’s good to be home,” she says.
  3. tedious
    so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness
    Mingling in this wide swath of strangers shifts my attention from myself, that tedious subject, to the world around me.
  4. routine
    an unvarying or habitual method or procedure
    I might as well be in a foreign country for all its similarities to my sober real life, with its predictable routines and rhythms—a day in the store, supper at six, a quiet evening of studying or quilting or bridge.
  5. recognition
    identifying something or someone by remembering
    We both start laughing—at the absurdity of our shared experience, the relief of recognition.
  6. astonished
    filled with the emotional impact of overwhelming surprise
    We cling to each other like survivors of a ship wreck, astonished that neither of us drowned.
  7. stumble
    encounter by chance
    Dutchy is talking to me through the piano, and, as in a dream, I understand his meaning. I have been so alone on this journey, cut off from my past. However hard I try, I will always feel alien and strange. And now I’ve stumbled on a fellow outsider, one who speaks my language without saying a word.
  8. adolescence
    the period between the beginning of puberty and adulthood
    It doesn’t matter that I barely know the man Dutchy has become, know nothing about his family, his adolescence.
  9. faith
    complete confidence in a person or plan, etc.
    “You still have it. That gives me faith.”
    “Faith in what?”
    “God, I suppose. No, I don’t know. Survival.”
  10. random
    lacking any definite plan or order or purpose
    My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate.
  11. circumspect
    careful to consider potential consequences and avoid risk
    Dutchy and I are about as opposite as two people can be. I am practical and circumspect; he is impulsive and direct.
  12. languorous
    lacking spirit or liveliness
    I have never felt like this—slow-witted and languorous, dreamy, absentminded, forgetful, focused only on each moment as it comes.
  13. clarity
    the quality of being coherent and easily understood
    And I know, with the newfound clarity of being in a relationship myself, that my own parents were never happy together, and probably never would have been, whatever the circumstance.
  14. ration
    distribute in fixed allowances
    Many items are rationed—meat, cheese, butter, lard, coffee, sugar, silk, nylon, shoes; our entire way of business changes as we work with those flimsy blue booklets. We learn to make change for ration stamps, giving red point tokens as change for red stamps (for meat and butter) and blue point tokens for blue stamps (processed foods).
  15. honorary
    given as an award without the normal duties
    The women in Mrs. Murphy’s quilting group—of which I am the youngest member and honorary daughter; they’ve cheered my every milestone—are taking extra care with it, hand sewing in precise small stitches a pattern on top of the design.
  16. parse
    analyze the sentence structure of
    I listen to the radio, scour the Tribune, wait anxiously for the mail drop, and devour Dutchy’s letters when they come, scanning quickly for news—is he okay? Eating well, healthy?—and parsing every word for tone and nuance, as if his sentences are a code I can crack.
  17. substance
    what a communication that is about something is about
    But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.
  18. effects
    property of a personal character that is portable
    Later I receive a box of his personal effects—his wristwatch, letters I wrote to him, some clothes.
  19. stark
    complete or extreme
    I am overcome with grief, with loss, with the stark misery of being alone.
  20. sorrow
    an emotion of great sadness associated with loss
    Lying in that hospital bed I feel all of it: the terrible weight of sorrow, the crumbling of my dreams.
  21. pristine
    immaculately clean and unused
    Molly fingers the never-used baby blanket, its basket-weave design still vivid, the stitches intricately pristine.
  22. stance
    a rationalized mental attitude
    Vivian’s resolute unsentimentality is a stance Molly understands only too well.
  23. frail
    physically weak
    Vivian rises from her chair and goes to the tall bay windows. Molly is struck by how frail she is, how narrow her silhouette.
  24. coward
    a person who shows fear or timidity
    “That’s not quite true. I could have kept the baby. Mrs. Nielsen would’ve helped. The truth is, I was a coward. I was selfish and afraid.”
  25. beholden
    under a moral obligation to someone
    How long is she going to be beholden to Terry, for God’s sake?
  26. complicated
    difficult to analyze or understand
    “It’s complicated for me,” he says.
    “Well . . .” Molly says. Here goes. “I don’t think it’s so complicated now. I told Vivian about stealing the book.”
  27. protocol
    code of correct conduct
    “There are protocols. Child Protective Services are going to be all over your ass. So will the police, if this gets out. You have to go through the system.”
  28. gracious
    characterized by kindness and warm courtesy
    “I’ve invited Molly to stay,” Vivian announces. “And she has graciously accepted.”
  29. scant
    less than the correct or legal or full amount
    Her belongings, all that she brought with her from the Thibodeaus’, fill a scant three shelves in the closet.
  30. criticism
    disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings
    She hadn’t realized how much of a toll the years of judgment and criticism, implied and expressed, have taken on her. It’s as if she’s been walking on a wire, trying to keep her balance, and now, for the first time, she is on solid ground.
  31. chronological
    relating to or arranged according to the order of time
    Everything is clearly labeled by place and date with a black Sharpie and neatly stacked in chronological sequence under the eaves.
  32. descendant
    a person considered as coming from some ancestor or race
    And soon enough, with a few quick strokes, she discovers a whole community of train riders and their descendants.
  33. ancestor
    someone from whom you are descended
    And there is a whole subgenre of ancestor research—sons and daughters flying to New York clutching scrapbooks, tracking down letters of indenture, photographs, birth certificates.
  34. artifact
    a man-made object
    With help from Molly, Vivian sets up an Amazon account and orders books. There are dozens of children’s stories about the trains, but what she’s interested in is the documents, the artifacts, the self-published train-rider stories, each one a testimony, a telling.
  35. trajectory
    the path followed by an object moving through space
    Many of the stories, she finds, follow a similar trajectory: This bad thing happened, and this—and I found myself on a train—and this bad thing happened, and this—but I grew up to become a respectable, law-abiding citizen; I fell in love, I had children and grandchildren; in short, I’ve had a happy life, a life that could only have been possible because I was orphaned or abandoned and sent to Kansas or Minnesota or Oklahoma on a train.
  36. kin
    a person related to another or others
    The site, described as a system for matching people who want to establish contact with their “next-of-kin by birth,” seemed reputable and aboveboard—nonprofit, no fee required.
  37. proliferate
    grow rapidly
    Other signs of the apocalypse proliferate. After a pop-up ad appears on her screen, Vivian announces that she plans to sign up for Netflix. She buys a digital camera on Amazon with one click. She asks Molly if she’s ever seen the sneezing baby panda video on YouTube. She even joins Facebook.
  38. enlightenment
    education that results in the spread of knowledge
    What up until this moment has felt like a random, disconnected series of unhappy events she now views as necessary steps in a journey toward . . . enlightenment is perhaps too strong a word, but there are others, less lofty, like self-acceptance and perspective.
  39. according
    in agreement with
    She has never believed in fate; it would’ve been dispiriting to accept that her life so far unfolded as it did according to some preordained pattern. But now she wonders. If she hadn’t been bounced from one foster home to the next, she wouldn’t have ended up on this island—and met Jack, and through him, Vivian.
  40. resonance
    the ability to create understanding or an emotional response
    She would never have heard Vivian’s story, with all its resonance to her own.
Created on Sun May 21 17:56:12 EDT 2017 (updated Tue Apr 09 13:41:35 EDT 2019)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.