Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.

In Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline seamlessly knits together the past and present of two women, one young and one old. Kline reminds us that we never really lose anyone or anything or – perhaps most importantly – ourselves.

I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner.

No mother should lose her child.

The only language she could speak was grief. How could he not know that? Instead, she said, "I love you." She did. She loved him. But even that didn't feel like anything anymore.

In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family - my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.

love is reliable. infatuation is temporary.