Mail-Order Kid: An Orphan Train Rider's Story

The massive orphan train exodus whisked three-year-old Teresa from the safety of her New York orphanage, where the worst thing the Foundling nuns did was wash her curly black hair, to a desolate house and cold-hearted "parents" in Kansas. There she entered a small and strange Volga German world whose inhabitants spoke a language she had never heard. In this odd world, she encountered whippings and sexual abuse. Perhaps half a million children, like Teresa, were plucked from orphanages and shipped by rail (or "relocated") to nearly every state in the Union from 1854 to 1929. Mail-Order Kid looks at the orphan train movement through the eyes of one small child who yearns to know her "real" mother, survives a tortured childhood, and ultimately, as an adult, comes to terms with her past, her faith, and herself.

Hi! Just so you know, my books and poems are either nice--or naughty. My nice books are histories of the truly amazing Great Plains, including the Orphan Trains and county seat wars. Sex rears its head in my naughty works. Plus I think I should tell you that I'm a personal writer. I don't write much that doesn't have an intimate feeling to it, that isn't centered, in some way, on my history. My life began in Alma, a tiny town in south central Nebraska, where I was born and raised. As I lay in bed, listening to my mother read me to sleep, I fell in love with words. Mom read oodles of books to me. My favorite was "The Farm Twins" by Lucy Fitch Perkins. When I turned eleven years old, I decided to be a writer.

At twenty-one, I graduated from the University of Nebraska with a journalism degree. Then I read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." Struck with the travel bug, I set out, saw Denver, New Orleans, San Diego, Portland, and New York. I lived in New York City for thirty years, where I taught writing at Pratt Institute, and earned a degree in creative writing from Brooklyn College. 

Now I'm back in Nebraska, located in Omaha. I'm a retired professor doing what I love best: writing full time. When I'm not pounding away at my computer, I can usually be found reading, pulling weeds, talking to my cat, or hanging out with my partner, Jack Loscutoff, also a writer. I have become an award winning and internationally published writer of poetry and prose who has written six books, six hundred poems, and hundreds of articles and stories. My awards include a national Pushcart Prize for my poem called "Pricksong," a Master Alumnus award for distinction in writing from the University of Nebraska, and the National Orphan Train Complex's Special President's Award for my biography, Mail-Order Kid. My "naughty" book, Marcella, is the first novel written in English that uses autoeroticism as its main theme. My writing has appeared in Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, India, and Japan.