Often thought of as America's first bestselling book, The Wide, Wide World (1850) by Susan Warner features a child in kinship care.

Ellen Montgomery is taken to Europe to live with an aunt because her mother is ill. The aunt, Fortune Emerson, is unkind. After a time Ellen is invited to stay with relatives in Scotland where she is treated more benevolently, but the relatives become possessive, wanting Ellen to renounce her American heritage and her religion.

Ellen returns to American after she marries John Humphreys, the brother of a friend she met when living with Fortune Emerson.