Girl in Falling Snow (Electronic book text)

Alice Childs, a strikingly beautiful fourteen year old girl, immigrates with her mother to America from London. During a black night in the voyage across the sea, Alice's mother is murdered. Now an orphan and penniless, Alice arrives in New York where she must survive on the dangerous streets by her wits and courage. She is arrested for stealing food to feed her starving little friend Gracie. Released into the custody of the nuns of the Catholic Church Children's Aid Society she is transported to Minnesota on the last of their Orphan Trains. There she falls into the hands of people brutal and vile and she must kill one of the two men who attack her. Frightened, hungry, freezing, she flees into the snow covered wilderness of northern Minnesota and trying to reach sanctuary in Canada. She is pursued by the sadistic rapist Taggert. During her journey, Alice encounters the half crazy Will also fleeing north to Canada, the black faced wolf that is drawn to follow her because of her unique scent, and the young fur trapper Paul and his mighty wolf hound Brutus. Exhausted and freezing, Alice reaches the frozen Rainy River where she and Will, the black face wolf, Paul and Brutus and the killer Taggert meet in a final battle of survival. From 1854 to 1929 an estimated 150,000 homeless children, orphans and abandoned children, were shipped by train from New York City to farms in mid-west America. There are an estimated 1,500,000 descendants, most of them alive today, who trace their roots to the boys and girls who rode the Catholic Church's Orphan Trains.