Cover Image: The Orphan Keeper

The Orphan Keeper

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Member Reviews

It took me awhile to get into this book, but it was actually pretty touching and fascinating. I can’t imagine has traumatizing it would be to be kidnapped and shipped off to a different country. Not knowing the language or the culture and desperately missing your family would be so difficult. Although it is fictionalized as Taj couldn’t remember all the details, it was eye opening and a heartwarming story about discovering ones past and reconnecting with family.

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10 Stars! I loved this book. Sometimes when I look at other books that I've given five stars to and compare them to this book I wonder if I should re-do some of my other ratings.

Great story of hope and faith. Taj Rowland's experiences and life will live with me forever. And, oh the words, the words! Camron Wright is an incredible story teller!! The audio narrator was fabulous with great pacing, voices for different people, and spot-on accents. Pictures at the end of the book added warmth and love.

We listened to this book in the car as a family. My husband loved it. My 15 year old son enjoyed it. My 18 year old daughter loved it. The first part of the book was a little slow but essential to understanding Taj and the rest of his life. This is a work of fiction, though. Most parts of Taj's life are accurately portrayed, but some are not. And the author even talks about that fact in the author's note at the end of the book.

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If you ask me what my favorite book is, chances are, if I name just one, it’s going to be The Rent Collector by Camron Wright. That book affected me in so many ways and it’s just all around an amazing story written amazingly. So I was really excited to be able to read this new one by Camron Wright. And I love this one just as much as The Rent Collector.

This is one of those books that if you didn’t know it’s based on a true story, you would say there’s just no way this stuff could have happened. I thought that Chellamuthu’s life when he lived in India was crazy. He’s a 7 year old boy living in India with his family. Many times he didn’t have enough food to eat and there are plenty of boys out there that had it even worse than he did. And in the story, those boys are the ones that cause trouble in his life. I can’t even imagine being kidnapped and removed from my family at the tender age of 7 years old. The grief that Chellamuthu must have felt must have been immense, and as a parent the grief that his parents felt seems incomprehensible to me.

I love the way this book is written from the point of view of this boy. I loved reading his story and trying to understand just how things would have been for him. I loved “travelling” from my nice home to the crazy land of India where there’s tons of humanity, much of it starving in this book. I love the dedication, it’s dedicated to “The lost child in all of us, searching for home.” That sentence just makes me think. But my favorite part has to be the ending, learning just where this young boy ended up and how he works to help not only his family, but many other families just like his in India.

This book touched me, as I finished reading the final chapter, I found myself crying. Such a sweet ending. Such an amazing story and hopefully I learned something from it that I can remember in my own life.

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Wow. This is a story you wish were not true; it is so painful to imagine. A little boy is stripped away from family with no control or means to return to them. I cannot fathom how anyone could do this to a child, but this book opens your eyes to another layer of injustice and sadness of children around the world. It is incredible to learn the journey to adulthood and returning to India to see the story full circle. Definitely an incredible read I'd highly recommend!

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This story took me on an emotional roller coaster ride. I became totally invested in Taj's journey and was never sure how it would end.

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