Wanderville

by Wendy McClure

  He stared out at the new faces around the fire. In some ways, they were all new faces—a month ago he hadn’t even known Frances or Harold or Alexander. He hadn’t any idea that there were towns in the middle of nowhere—towns on the prairie where the railroad took you, but also towns that you made yourself. Well, not just by yourself.

  His eyes met Frances’s and she smiled.

  “It’s where friends are,” she said. “And there’s room for more.”

  Acknowledgments

  I am so grateful for the amazing people at Razorbill—to Ben Schrank, who gave me the opportunity to build an imaginary town in the woods; to my editor, Gillian Levinson, for her thoroughness and energy that have inspired me both as a writer and as a fellow editor; and to everyone else at Razorbill who helped make this book happen. Thanks so much as well to Sarah Burnes, my agent, who provided encouragement and support; and to my husband, Chris, for reading my drafts and sitting with me to watch all the various documentaries and movies I sought out for research.

  And special thanks to the staff and curators at the Old Courthouse Museum in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for providing me with archived newspaper articles one September weekend when I first began writing this book in a hotel room and was desperate to know more about the children who traveled on orphan trains to the Midwest.

  WanDer over to book two, coming Fall 2014!

  Wendy McClure (WendyMcClure.net) is the author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost of World of Little House on the Prairie and several other books for adults and children. She is a senior editor at Albert Whitman and Company, where her recent projects include books in the Boxcar Children series. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has been a contributor to the New York Times Magazine and This American Life. She lives in Chicago with her husband.