In the mid-1800s, 10,000 homeless children prowled the streets of New York City.Children's Aid Society in New York snet more than 150,000 children to framing communities to begin new lives with foster families.
Story of Billy, a streetwise kid from NYC, sent to Nebraska where he is taken in by a Swedish farm family as part of the historic Orphan Train program of the Midwest at the turn of the century.
An orphan boy from Boston travels on an "orphan train" to Michigan, where he is adopted by a farmer and his wife, but they soon leave the farm for the copper mines of the Upper Peninsula.
Explores the history of orphan trains, which took orphaned children from large cities to the American West for a chance at a new life, providing different points of view.
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.