When their mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live withfarm families in Missouri in 1860.

Four plays dramatize the trials of Horace Robedaux, whose father's sudden death places Horace between his father's and his mother's families.

"Lily Chalmers wanted only two things from life -- a farm of her own, and to find the sisters she hadn't seen since they were all little girls heading West on the orphan train ... She certainly had no desire for a husband. Yet proud, innocent Lily had no idea what desire meant until she met Major Caleb Halliday, a man who could ignite her very being with a touch ... a glance ... a whisper. Sheltered in his arms, Lily rode the crest of a wild, helpless...

Holding her lovely head high, Wyoming schoolmistress Caroline Chalmers did what no lady should: she marched right into the local saloon to see the dashing and reckless Guthrie Hayes. Worse still, she went to ask him for help. She needed the former Confederate raider to plan a jailbreak to rescue her fiancé, Seaton Flynn, from the hangman's noose. An orphan by spinster sisters, Caroline was prepared do almost anything to save her beloved Seaton. So...

In 1863, eleven-year-old Peg Kelly is drawn into the dangerous activities of a mysterious young woman who had come to her home in Missouri after fleeing the raid of William Quantrill and his raiders on Lawrence, Kansas.

When Brooke is adopted by a wealthy couple, she thinks her life will be perfect, but when her mother starts molding Brooke into a pint-sized version of herself, she realizes that her mother didn't want a daughter, she wanted a clone.

"As an orphan girl, Crystal was one of many -- and utterly alone. But she still dreamed of a shining life of love and happiness, and freedom from the dark legacy of her past"--Page 4 of cover

Ten-year-old Lucy, an orphan who wants a little sister more than anything, finds a very special one in the less than perfect family which she joins.

Sent away on an orphan train by his self-centered father Jessie, Will keeps hoping Jessie will return to claim him, even though the people he lives with care for him far more.