Families Formed By Fate

The story follows a brother and sister orphaned as the result of a catastrophic fire in Boston. They choose to ride an Orphan Train to the Midwest in the hopes they will find a couple to adopt them. Meanwhile a teenaged girl in Iowa is left to live alone when her father joins the North in the Civil War and her mother dies unexpectedly. The story basically follows the lives of those three people when their paths cross in a small Iowa town. It also touches on the trials a black boy faces trying to make a life for himself in a white community after he has been legally freed from slavery as a result of the civil war. He comes to Iowa at the invitation of a doctor who befriended him at the army camp. Another family is formed when the town busy-body gets a boost of self-esteem from concerned strangers.