Red Caboose-an Orphan’s Journey

In 1960, Jeanette Van Zanten, a three-year-old girl from Sharon, Pennsylvania tragically loses her father to death. The setting begins in Western, Pennsylvania when the US Government siezed the family farm and her father, who belonged to the Moose Club, died from an alcohol-related illness after he was in a car accident. When her mother is unable to care for her and her six siblings, the family is uprooted from a family farm and relocated to Mooseheart, an orphanage in Illinois. Upon arrival to Mooseheart, the siblings are separated from one another and scattered to halls throughout the grounds of the orphanage where they at the mercy of strict matrons. Jeanette creatively adapts to the rigid lifestyle filled with rules and regulations, but never loses hope that someday she will be free. Once she attains her desired physical freedom and is on her own, she resiliently readjusts to life outside the orphanage and perilously navigates her way through adolescence into adulthood. Once on her own, she longs to have the family she never had but finds herself trapped not only in an unhappy marriage but also in a high mind control religion that is reminiscent of the structure of her childhood.

In 1960, Jeanette Van Zanten, a three-year-old girl from Sharon, Pennsylvania tragically loses her father to death. The setting begins in Western, Pennsylvania when the US Government siezed the family farm and her father, who belonged to the Moose Club, died from an alcohol-related illness after he was in a car accident. When her mother is unable to care for her and her six siblings, the family is uprooted from a family farm and relocated to Mooseheart, an orphanage in Illinois. Upon arrival to Mooseheart, the siblings are separated from one another and scattered to halls throughout the grounds of the orphanage where they at the mercy of strict matrons. Jeanette creatively adapts to the rigid lifestyle filled with rules and regulations, but never loses hope that someday she will be free. Once she attains her desired physical freedom and is on her own, she resiliently readjusts to life outside the orphanage and perilously navigates her way through adolescence into adulthood. Once on her own, she longs to have the family she never had but finds herself trapped not only in an unhappy marriage but also in a high mind control religion that is reminiscent of the structure of her childhood.