50 pages • 1 hour read
The Orphan's Tale
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Prologue-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, child death, racism, religious discrimination, graphic violence, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.
Prologue Summary
In the present, an elderly woman has secretly left her nursing home in the US to visit a circus exhibit at the Petit Palais museum in Paris, where she once lived but has not visited in 50 years. A former circus performer, she hopes to find answers about her past during World War II. Slowed by an old hip injury, she enters the gala uninvited. Inside, she views photographs of historic circus dynasties, stopping before a picture of a young aerialist mid-performance. She remembers the circus music and what it was like to be under the circus lights, flying through the air.
She finds a restored railcar she recognizes from the war. Slipping under a rope, she opens a hidden compartment beneath the floor, only to discover it is empty. The discovery dashes her hope, leaving her with a sense of finality and loss.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Noa”
In February 1944, a young Dutch woman, Noa, works as a cleaner at a German train station. Disowned by her family after becoming pregnant by a German soldier, she was sent to a Lebensborn home where her baby was taken from her. One night, Noa investigates a parked train and opens a boxcar to find it filled with dead and dying infants.
