Book Review: The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright

Book: The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright
Genre: novel based on a true story (is that it's own genre? Sort of a novelized memoir?)
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★


Hey it's our book club book and book club isn't happen for another week and a half and I have the book read already! Things are CHANGING around here!! LOL.

I loved this guy's other book, The Rent Collector and this book has had it's fair share of buzz (man I seem to be catching up on all the buzz lately.. well some) and so the book club voted it in and here we are!

It's about a boy who grew up in India until he was about 8 years old, and then bam, one day he was kidnapped and sold to an orphanage where he was then adopted to an  American family, which happened to be located here in Utah. This is that crazy crazy story!

Because later when he grew up, he went back and found his Indian family! With hardly ANYTHING to go on. He had no idea what city to look in... and we are talking INDIA here! It's really an amazing story. And I loved it! I devoured this book in fact.

The story is novelized to fill in all the missing blanks from when he was a kid and to change around a few characters, but if I'm understanding correctly, it's basically following exactly what happened. Someone just took him off the street one day when he was waiting for his dad and they took him to an orphanage. Luckily, it seems he was treated well and life was actually better for him, but still... his family! His mom! He even tried to escape at one point, but went back to help the sick girl that needed his knowledge because he knew what plant would help her.

When he arrived in America, he tried to explain to his new family that he still had a family, but it took awhile for his English to be good enough to get through to them. And once it did, they tried as best they could to figure it out, but everything led to a dead end. So after awhile, they gave up.

So it wasn't until he was in college that he started feeling a draw to his country. He meet some wonderful people and they helped him get back (mostly.. he had some resistance too.) And once he was there, he went off just some small clues and started combing the area to figure it out. The way he finally ends up finding them is... amazing. And yes, I cried.

Anyway, his life has turned out be be pretty good in the end.  And he has been able to live sort of teh best of both worlds. But he still struggles. Because of this question: Is it good that he was kidnapped and taken from his family? Because look at what he has now... and how he has been able to help the people in India... so, was it good thing?  Ah, it hurts my heart to try and answer this question! I'm sure we will discuss at book club and find all the answers!

The book was beautifully written. Sometimes a touch too flowery in description for my taste, BUT I did devour it and could hardly put it down, so it's obviously engaging and paints a wonderful picture of what life must have been like in India... and afterwards... for this guy.