Sunset and Steel Rails

On a mild spring morning in 1884, just short of her 21st birthday, the ordered and respectable life of Sophia Brewer fell apart, without any warning. The orphaned daughter of a well-established old Boston family fallen on difficult times, she thought herself cherished by her older brother, and loved for herself by the fiancée who abruptly broke their engagement. But worse was yet to come. Within the space of weeks, Sophia – abandoned by fiancée, friends and family, threatened by unwilling confinement to the insane asylum – had only one chance at escape and survival. That was to travel the steel rails towards the sunset; a journey into the newly-tamed Wild West, working for the Fred Harvey Company as a waitress in a railroad restaurant concession on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Finding freedom and independence as a Harvey Girl comes at a cost for Sophia; she must break with her background of privilege. But even out in the West, there are still decades-old scandalous family secrets ... secrets and events which might still threaten Sophia Brewer and the man who means to court her, and give her the life that she had once expected.