A twelve-year-old Polish American girl is boarded onto an orphan train in Chicago with fears about traveling to the West and a life of unpaid slavery.

Bella Jones and Kathleen Collins are as close as sisters and that's how they want things to stay. But fate intervenes. Kathleen's brothers have disappeared, they traveled from New York on the Orphan Train and nobody has heard from them since. She can't shed her gut feeling something awful has happened to them. She goes looking for them but is she prepared for what she will find? Twins, Megan and Eileen Doyle have lost so much already. Bella can't...

"With his mother dead, his father gone, and his older brothers and sisters unable to help, eight-year-old Ethan Cooper knows it's his responsibility to keep him and his younger siblings together--even if that means going to an orphanage. Ethan, Alice, Simon, and Will settle into the Briarlane Christian Children's Home, where there's plenty to eat, plenty of work, and plenty of talk about a Father who never leaves. Even so, Ethan fears losing the only...

"Life on the Rush farm in South Dakota is not easy. Even so, over the past four years, Ethan Cooper and his siblings have grown to feel they belong with their adoptive family. Then Chad Rush makes an unexpected announcement. The family is moving again--this time to Mexico! Ethan is scared. What dangers will they face in another country? What will it be like to live on an oil homestead instead of a farm? And what about his dreams of getting an education?...

"Nine-year-old Ethan Cooper has managed to keep his family together for a year in a Pennsylvania orphanage. Now he and his siblings are boarding a train headed west. He can't help but worry: Mr. and Mrs. Rush in Nebraska have agreed to adopt all four Cooper children, but what if they change their minds? In the meantime, Ethan and his siblings encounter their first dust storm, explore train cars, and watch friend after friend leave with new parents....

A clumsy and unattractive twelve-year-old, Aggie is sure no one will want to adopt her when she rides the orphan train out west, but when she meets the eccentric Bradon family she begins to have some hope. Includes historical information about orphan trains and the woman's suffrage movement.

Tells the story of the children who rode the orphan trains that ran from 1854 to 1929 bringing thousands from East Coast orphanages into rural settings for adoption.