Sawyer, Kim Vogel

Addie Cowherd dreams of becoming a novelist, but the Great Depression forces her to take the only job available to her: delivering books to the impoverished Kentucky hill country of Boone's Hollow. There, the community is deeply suspicious of her and tries to sabotage the library program. She teams up with a college graduate named Emmett Tharp, who has returned home, to keep the library system going and win over the hearts of the community.

Three Irish immigrant children, orphaned in a tenement fire, are sent on the orphan train to Missouri where they are adopted by different families, and although Maelle had vowed to one day reunite with her younger brother and sister, seventeen years later she is about to give up hope.