She and Lauri needed to be together, side by side, eating and sleeping and playing cards, telling fortunes in candle wax, dragging heavy bags of potatoes home from market, keeping out of the adults' way when they had hangovers, doing all the things that just naturally fell into place when there were two of you, almost all the time... the way they used to be. I came across this book while I was searching for another. I wanted to read Helen Dunmore's The Siege about the blockade of Leningrad in 1941, but since I couldn't find that, I decided to read The House of Orphans instead. The year is 1901, the place is Finland. Eeva, the orphaned 16-year-old daughter of a revolutionary, is sent from the "House of Orphans" to be a housekeeper for Thomas, a widowed country doctor. Thomas soon becomes fascinated by the quiet orphan girl who does not want anyone to know that she can read and write, speak several languages and has fairly radical political views. The firs...