The Orphan Collector: A Heroic Novel of Survival During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

The Orphan Collector: A Heroic Novel of Survival During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (2020) is a bestselling historical fiction novel by Ellen Marie Wiseman. Published months after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this novel explores the devastation of the 1918 flu pandemic through themes of family, shame, and survival against a political backdrop of anti-German sentiments, World War I, immigration, and class. Wiseman has written several other historical novels, often featuring strong women and girls who face adversity in the midst of major historical events such as the Holocaust (The Plum Tree) and the Roaring Twenties (What She Left Behind).

Content Warning: The text contains descriptions of death, child abuse, racism, anti-immigrant bias, kidnapping, and suicidal ideation. Certain quotes in this guide replicate language that highlights specific characters’ racism and anti-immigrant biases.

Plot Summary

The novel follows 13-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange, who lives in Philadelphia with her mother (Mutti), four-month-old twin brothers Max and Ollie, and her father (Vater), who is fighting for the American army in World War I. With the war ending, people crowd the streets of Philadelphia in celebrations. Soon after the parade, the flu epidemic breaks out, killing many, especially those from lower-class families, who are unable to get care at overwhelmed hospitals. Pia can sense illness through touch and notices when her mother sickens; Mrs. Lange soon dies from the flu, leaving Pia to care for her younger brothers alone. After a week, Pia has no food or supplies, so she must venture out into the city. She decides to leave her brothers at home, tucked away in a cubby to keep them safe. While out, Pia becomes sick and passes out on the street.

Meanwhile, Pia’s neighbor, Bernice Groves, is mourning the death of her infant son, who died from the flu. Bernice sees Pia leave her house and goes across the street to investigate. While Bernice is at the Langes’, a nurse from the Red Cross comes to check on the family. Bernice, deciding Pia is too immature to care for the children, lies that the twins are hers. When Bernice returns home, she sees the nurse again, who continues to question her before coming down with the flu herself. Bernice speeds along the nurse’s death by slipping rat poison in her tea and then steals her uniform.

Pia wakes a week later in a church-turned-hospital, panicked about her brothers. She begs the nurses and nuns to help her, but none do. Once she has recovered, Pia escapes and goes home, finding that her brothers are gone and a new family has moved into their apartment. Hopeful that her father will return, Pia leaves a note explaining she is looking for her brothers. She is then captured and taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan “Asylum.” Filled with guilt about abandoning her brothers, Pia again tries to escape. Mother Joe catches her, but when Pia explains that her brothers are living unsupervised, Mother Joe promises that she will release Pia if she behaves.

Wearing the Red Cross nurse outfit, Bernice begins going door to door asking for donations. She tells people her name is Nurse Wallis. She has moved to a new house; an elderly couple, the Pattersons, watch the twins while she is at “work.” One day, she finds a young immigrant boy on the street and takes him to an orphanage. She decides that it is her duty to help remove immigrant children from the streets.

Pia begins working in the infants’ ward at the orphanage, where she encounters Nurse Wallis on one of her supposed philanthropic missions. Pia is unsure why Nurse Wallis dislikes her so much—she even threatens to have Pia sent to a psychiatric hospital—not recognizing that they were neighbors. Meanwhile, Bernice has begun to lure immigrant children from their homes using promises of food from the Red Cross. While taking one such young boy to the orphanage, Bernice learns that white immigrant children are being sent to the countryside to be cared for by families there. After learning this, she begins to take children to the train station and sends them out of town. She continues to make visits to St. Vincent’s, searching for children to put on trains; she rebuffs Pia’s request for help finding her brothers.

Soon, Pia’s childhood friend, Finn Duffy, arrives at the orphanage. Pia is happy to be reunited and finally shares the truth about leaving her brothers. The pair begin to plan an escape. One day, Nurse Wallis returns, and Pia notices that Nurse Wallis and Finn are looking at each other in a peculiar way. The next day Pia tries to find Finn, but he has vanished. Panicked that he left without her, Pia faints, landing on her arm.

Nurse Wallis begins finding middle-class families who recently lost a child and places white orphan children with them. She extorts money from these families under the guise of donations to the orphanage.

After Pia’s arm heals, Mother Joe upholds her promise to release Pia, sending her to work for the wealthy Dr. and Mrs. Hudson, who need help with their children. Mrs. Hudson is welcoming, giving Pia new clothes, her own room, and more food than she has ever had. Quickly, Pia falls into a routine with the Hudsons and their four children: 2-month-old Leo, 22-month-old Elizabeth, 5-year-old Sophie, and 6-year-old Margaret. Pia notices that their son Leo feels weak. One day, when Leo feels sicker than usual, she explains to his parents that she thinks something is wrong. Dr. Hudson examines Leo and finds nothing, but the couple is thankful that Pia cares so much about their children. That night, Mrs. Hudson finds Leo dead in his crib. Dr. Hudson asks Pia how Pia knew something was wrong, and she eventually explains that it is something she can sense, proving her point by “diagnosing” Dr. Hudson with an infection. Dr. Hudson pledges to never question Pia’s intuition again.

Shortly after Leo’s funeral, Nurse Wallis appears at the Hudsons’ door, explaining that Dr. Hudson sent for her. She sympathizes with the grief-stricken Mrs. Hudson, explains that she herself lost a son, and visits multiple days in a row. During one of the visits, Pia looks in Nurse Wallis’s medical bag for her ledger, hoping there may be information about her brothers; Nurse Wallis becomes suspicious of Pia when she notices her ledger is falling out of her bag. The next day, Nurse Wallis returns with a small infant boy who needs a home. Though it has only been a little over a week since Leo’s death, Mrs. Hudson agrees to look after the child. When Nurse Wallis returns several days later, Mrs. Hudson tries to give the baby back, but Nurse Wallis insists there is nowhere for him to go. Eventually, Dr. and Mrs. Hudson agree to keep the baby and call him Cooper, only learning later that Nurse Wallis expects them to make a “donation” in exchange. Pia overhears this argument, and Nurse Wallis accuses her of eavesdropping and questions her about how her brothers went missing. Mrs. Hudson stands up for Pia, asking Nurse Walliswhy she lied about knowing Pia and then kicking Nurse Wallis out. After Nurse Wallis leaves, Pia explains that she thinks Nurse Wallis is selling children and shares what happened to her brothers. Mrs. Hudson is sympathetic and agrees to take Pia back to her apartment to search for news from her father. Dr. Hudson investigates Nurse Wallis, but he doesn’t find anything amiss.

Two days later, a young woman named Rebecca appears on the Hudsons’ front porch, explaining that Mother Joe sent her. She begs for work, and Mrs. Hudson finally agrees to give her a position in the laundry. When Rebecca comes for her first day of work, Pia finds a rattle in Cooper’s crib that looks identical to one of the rattles her father carved for the twins. Shocked, she asks Mrs. Hudson where it came from. Mrs. Hudson explains that Rebecca found it in a package when she arrived. Pia explains she thinks it is her brother’s rattle, so they go to Dr. Hudson’s office to explain what is going on. When they come back, Rebecca has taken Cooper upstairs, leaving the other children unattended. When they find Rebecca, she is crying and nursing Cooper, and Mrs. Hudson fires her.

Dr. Hudson takes Pia back to her family’s apartment, where she finds a note explaining that her father died in the war.

Five years later, Pia has almost become part of the Hudsons’ family. When she returns to the house after taking the older children to school, she is surprised to find Finn waiting on the porch for her. After catching up, they realize that Nurse Wallis is really Bernice, who used to live down the hall from Finn. He explains that he recognized her at the orphanage, so she forced him onto a train to Iowa and lied about a family waiting for him there. Pia realizes that Nurse Wallis took the twins.

Finn and Pia return to St. Vincent’s to question Mother Joe about Nurse Wallis, but they learn nothing. Feeling defeated, Pia runs into Rebecca, who asks if she can help them. Pia asks if she knows Nurse Wallis, and Rebecca explains that Nurse Wallis stole her child and gave him to the Hudsons. When Rebecca begged to see her baby, Nurse Wallis agreed on the condition that Rebecca would drop a package off at the house. When Rebecca picked up the rattle at Nurse Wallis’s home, she saw Nurse Wallis kissing two babies goodbye. Pia asks if Rebecca will take Finn and her there. Rebecca agrees.

Pia, Finn, and Rebecca arrive at Nurse Wallis’s apartment and force their way in. Pia demands to know where her brothers are, and Nurse Wallis refuses to tell her. Pia searches her home and finally finds the ledger. Nurse Wallis wrestles it from Pia’s hands and throws it in the fire. When Pia touches Nurse Wallis, Pia can feel that Nurse Wallis is sick and close to dying. Pia continues to pressure her to tell the truth, but Nurse Wallis dies before she can share any information.

Hopeful the neighbors will have some information, Pia knocks on their door and asks if they know anything about the twins. The elderly couple, the Pattersons, explain that Nurse Wallis gave the children away even after they offered to take them. However, the Pattersons know where the twins are.

Later, Pia, Finn, and the Hudsons await the Pattersons’ arrival at the Hudsons’ home. They arrive with a young couple and the twins, and Pia invites them in.