The end of the nineteenth century might have been the Gilded Age for the likes of Rockefellers and Carnegies—but for the newly arriving immigrants and poverty-stricken Americans packed into Manhattan's teeming Lower Eastside, it was a different story all together.

In this tumultuous time, factory worker Virginia Chisholm hopes for more, but her dreams go up in smoke when a tenement blaze rips her family apart. Aided by Lindsay Killian, the street-wise, rail-riding drifter she meets in a charity hospital, Ginny follows the orphan train that has taken her siblings west. The desperate quest to reunite her family takes the young women from the slums of New York City to the farms of West Virginia and the bustling frontier beyond. This harrowing journey moves Ginny and Lindsay from one mishap and adventure to another. It also leads them both from friendship to a tender and unexpected romance.