Johanna Shelby could never have anticipated where that "fateful encounter" would lead her. She could not have known then how love for the young, rough-hewn, mountain doctor would cause her to turn her back on her privileged lifestyle, threaten to estrange her from her family, and bring her to the wild mountains of Appalachia. If she had known . . . But no! Nothing could hold her back. Not her adoring, worried parents. Not her snooty, so-called "friends."...

After her mother leaves six-year-old Toddy at the county children's home, she is chosen by a minister's wife to go West on the Orphan Train and is taken in by a wealthy widow as a companion for her sickly granddaughter.

It is spring, 1890. Three eight-year-old girls leave overcrowded, bleak Greystone Orphanage near Boston and set out together on the "Orphan Train," heading West to adoptive homes. --- {Excerpt from back cover.}

Abandoned by her widowed father, Kit rides the Orphan Train west where a farm family takes her in to help with chores, never expecting that one day she would overcome all the obstacles before her and become a successful writer.