Julia Park Tracey

Julia Park Tracey is an award-winning author, journalist, and poet. She has ancestors—or should we say an-sisters? In digging through her family history, she has uncovered a trove of powerful women who break rules and stand tall against whatever dares to oppose them. The Bereaved tells the first such story, of a widow whose children are sent out on the Orphan Train and her Herculean efforts to get them back again. Inspired by a mysterious train receipt in her family’s scrapbook, Julia researched her Orphan Train roots and wrote The Bereaved about her found relatives. Another such heroine is the Puritan woman named Silence Greenleaf; look for Silence from Sibylline Press in Fall 2024.

The Bereaved: Martha, an impoverished widow, must leave her family with a children’s aid society for survival. The children are sent out on the Orphan Train and Martha is forced to extremes to reunite her family from three distant states during the Civil War. The novel is meticulously researched and based on a true story; the baby Homer was my great-great-grandfather.

Silence: A Puritan questioning her faith is punished by the authorities with a year of silence, but is soon called to witness at a witchcraft trial in colonial Massachusetts. Her quandary is in speaking truth to power or being true to herself. The novel is based on my eighth great grandmother, Silence Greenleaf.