The Chaperone

I very much enjoyed The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty which is the fictional life story of a woman, Cora, beginning in the 1920s.  She is asked to chaperone a precocious 15-year-old girl, Louise, to New York to join a dance company.  Cora has another reason for wanting to go to New York, to find out more about her origins.  She was brought up in an orphanage and then sent on a train out west where she was adopted off the train.  This was a way for New York to rid itself of its poor children.  Cora learns more than she thought she would while in New York and returns to Kansas a "different" woman.  The reader follows Cora's long life, at the same time learning about the "morality" of the early time and seeing how things change. A good story with interesting angles. 41/2/5.