About this story
A hired man named Jake is delivering you to grandparents you know mostly from letters, and somewhere in the forward car rides an immigrant family bound for the same county, a girl your age watching from behind the piled bedding. Black Hawk arrives in the dark. A man with a scar loads your trunk and tells you her name.
Who you’ll meet
Antonia Shimerda, the Bohemian girl found by somebody else's lantern on a Nebraska railway platform, with Otto Fuchs, the hired man who is lighting her by accident while he hauls a trunk.
How it opens
At ten years old, you traveled west after losing both parents within a single year.
Day coaches gathered soot, crumbs, and strangers as Virginia receded beyond remembrance.
Jake MarpoleYour grandfather's letter says a hired man will meet us at Black Hawk.
Train ConductorKeep the boy close after dark; western platforms are poorly lighted.
Jake MarpoleHe keeps closer to that outlaw book than he does to me.
Choose
Its robbers know where they are going.
Read one chapter and judge it fairly.