In the Face of Danger

December 1, 1988
Gr 5-8 -The third volume in the projected "Orphan Train Quartet" tells the story of 12-year-old Megan Kelly after Emma and Benjamin Browder take her to live with them on the Kansas prairie. This exciting and touching novel projects an aura of historical reality. Megan believes that she brings bad luck to herself and those around her because of a gypsy curse. This image of herself as a "bad-luck penny" colors her perceptions of everything that happens to her and her loved ones until her kind foster mother helps her to understand that life can be what she makes it. Slowly she gains confidence in herself and is instrumental in saving her family from a killer on the run. The historical aspects of In the Face of Danger will have particular interest and appeal to this generation of children who hear so much about the problems of today's foster, abandoned, and street children that they will be able to relate to and understand the problems of the Kelly children and others like them 130-some odd years ago. Janet E. Gelfand, Lawrence Junior High School, N.Y.