Orphan #8: A Novel

Kim van Alkemade has written several articles in magazines that have been described as "creative non-fiction", whatever that may be. While researching her family genealogy, she came across a reference to a Medical Journal article that shocked her and she felt compelled to tell the story, but in a fictionalized novel. Some of the people in this book are actually real. Some are actually her relatives. While the girl, Rachel Rabinowitz and her brother Sam are works of fiction, what happens to Rachel, is not. This is an important book that raises questions about science and its practice, and whether you can forsake justified vengeance and forgive the unforgivable. In 1919 the Jewish family, the Rabinowitzs, which consists of Harry, the father who works in a shirtwaist factory, who is saving for the chance to have his own contractor business, goes to Society meetings to make contacts, and is hoping to move his family up to the nicer neighborhood of Harlem; Visha, his wife, who wants another child and dreams of moving out of their three room tenement, where she looks after two borders and the two children, Rachel, four (who is known for her temper tantrums that only her brother can seem to stop) and Sam, six, who just started school. When Harry forgets his lunch, Visha and Rachel go to the factory, which Harry has forbidden them to do. When they return home, an angry Italian mother and her eighteen-year-old daughter show up at her house telling her that Harry, who met the girl at…

Orphan # 8 was Rachel Rabinowitz, but she didn't start out as an orphan. This story follows Rachel's life, through all of the ugly twists and turns at the beginning, to the kindness of strangers who helped her along the way and eventually to Rachel herself as she must come to terms with her own past in order to face her uncertain future. Rachel's story exposes some of the ugly truths about our society, including medical experiments on groups of orphans, to the exclusion and negative societal attitudes about homosexuals, but her story also inspires hope through the kindest of strangers or even the hopeful advice from a holocaust survivor. Ultimately Rachel must decide for herself how to deal with the woman who inflicted cruel and unnecessary experiments on her as a child, when that same doctor is admitted to her ward in the hospital. In her treatment of this doctor, Rachel must confront the ghosts of her past and find the courage to deal with her own health issues that she has been neglecting. The writing was well done, but felt somewhat repetitive at times. The story switched easily from past to present with great historical details. Rachel's story is all the more tragic when considering that while the novel is fiction, according to the author's website, medical research on children in orphanages was a common practice, and that there really are children who grew up like Rachel. I really enjoyed this story and would recommend it to any fans of historical fiction. Orphan #8 is…