Orphan Train - a fictional account of an historical movement ("an historic" when will that fall out of use?)

 

Source: Readers Digest condensed novels from my mom and Grandma. These editions usually contain a story about WWII. I generally avoid those. This one is a fictional account of the historical orphan train movement which occurred in the 1800s. 

Here's the account from wiki: he Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating about 250,000 children. The co-founders of the Orphan Train movement claimed that these children were orphaned, abandoned, abused, or homeless, but this was not always true. They were mostly the children of new immigrants and the children of the poor and destitute families living in these cities.

In this story, a "spinster" - poor 27 year old throwback lol, takes on somewhat by default, due to her uncle's sudden heart seizure, the leadership of transporting a group of unruly street children out to be placed with new families. The story is heartwarming, includes romance (yay), tragedy, and depicts certain hardships and realities of the times in which it is set.