The Journey Home

The Journey Home is a historical novel for children written by Isabelle Holland in 1990. The story follows Maggie and Annie, two young Irish Catholic sisters who honor their dead mother’s wish, riding the orphan train west, seeking a new family to adopt them both. As Maggie and Annie settle into a new life, they encounter both kindness and instances of classism and religious prejudice. In The Journey Home, Holland explores themes of loss, family, and acceptance. A sequel, The Promised Land, was published in 1996.

The novel begins in New York City in the late 1880s. Responsible, practical, twelve-year-old Maggie Lavin has been nursing her Ma, who is dying from consumption. Mrs. Lavin has not been able to work or pay the rent on their filthy tenement apartment. Her husband, charming Michael Lavin, had had great hopes for the future when the family immigrated from Ireland, but he had taken to drinking and was killed while working onboard a ship.

Now, Mrs. Lavin makes Maggie promise that she and her younger sister, seven-year-old Annie, will go to the Children’s Aid Society and take the orphan train out of this “city of the Devil,” to find a new family. Mrs. Lavin knows that poor, homeless girls often end up as prostitutes and she doesn’t want that for her daughters. Annie already hangs around the Green Harp, the bar their father frequented, to take care of the proprietress’s dog, Timmie. Unlike Maggie, Annie “has a head full of pictures,” and often retreats into her imagination rather than being useful.



Maggie knows that she is proud. She hates being poor and resents the rich ladies her mother worked for; she is ashamed of their dirty apartment and the fact that she can’t read. Maggie desperately hopes her mother will not die; she doesn’t want to go west. Their priest, Father O’Mara, disapproves of the Children’s Aid Society. He claims that the children will be forced to become Protestants. Mrs. Lavin tells Maggie that they don’t have to be anything they don’t want to be. She reassures Maggie and Annie she will be with the Blessed Virgin, watching over them. Mrs. Lavin dies in Bellevue Hospital.

Maggie takes Annie to the Children’s Aid Society where Miss Trent organizes their trip west. Miss Trent says she will do her best to keep the sisters together but cannot promise they will go to the same family. Annie is resistant and angry and emotional. The sisters travel on the train for a month with twenty-five other children. Everyone, even Lawrence, who is lame, is adopted except Maggie and Annie.

Melrose, Kansas is their last chance to find a home. Miss Trent introduces them to the Russell family. Mr. James Russell is tall and stern-looking with a short beard. His wife, Priscilla, is thin and frail, with gray eyes and light brown hair. She is a former schoolteacher. The Russells are interested in adopting Maggie but do not want Annie. James worries such a small child would be a burden to his wife and fears she would become sick again. Maggie refuses to be adopted without Annie. Priscilla convinces James, and the couple takes both sisters to their log cabin home on the prairie. They ask the girls to call them Aunt Priscilla and Uncle James, knowing that they already have dear memories of their own mother and father.



Kansas is very different from New York City, though the fresh air and far horizon remind Maggie of the years she lived in Ireland. Maggie and Annie meet the cow and calf, the Russells’ two horses, Rufus and Rumpkin, and their fierce guard dog, Spot. They also meet Priscilla’s mother, Mrs. Vanderpool, who lives with them. Priscilla confesses to Maggie that part of the reason they adopted her was to help take care of Mrs. Vanderpool. A former society lady, Mrs. Vanderpool suffers from an injured hip and bad heart. She did not want the Russells to move to Kansas and doesn’t like being there herself.
Things get off to a rocky start when Mrs. Vanderpool insults Maggie by referring to the “ignorance of the Irish,” and James gets upset with Annie for her Catholic understanding that her mother is with the Blessed Virgin. Baptists, the Russells do not share the sisters’ beliefs. Kind Priscilla intervenes, forcing both James and Mrs. Vanderpool to apologize, saying they “must have made those two lonely, motherless children feel like unwanted outcasts.”

Maggie and Annie begin to settle into their new life. Annie has a way with animals and is soon doing the milking chores. Annie also bonds with Spot. The two attend school in a one-room schoolhouse. Annie makes friends, and Maggie shares a desk with Tom Brinton. Pretty, stuck-up Ellen McCandless snubs Maggie for being Catholic. Maggie must swallow her pride and admit to her teacher, Miss Bailey, that she cannot read. Priscilla tutors Maggie at home to help her catch up.

A substitute teacher humiliates Maggie before the whole school, forcing her to show that she cannot read. She keeps Maggie late, and when Maggie struggles home through the snow, she finds that Annie is not home: Ellen McCandless left her alone in the storm. They find Annie in a snowbank, kept alive only by the warmth of Spot, who stayed with her. While Annie is sick with fever, she prefers Priscilla to care for her, which makes Maggie jealous.



Mrs. Vanderpool warms up to Maggie, observing that they both need to learn to set aside their pride and jealousy and to forgive. She reads aloud to Maggie from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Maggie experiences the joy of reading. When Mrs. Vanderpool and Priscilla become ill, Maggie cooks and cleans and nurses them both, with the help of kindly neighbors. James praises Maggie and Annie saying, “No daughters born to us could have done more.” Maggie successfully learns to read. At the church’s Thanksgiving dinner, Maggie realizes happily that Kansas is “home.”