num_pages: 299
description: Times are hard in 1893. In the midst of an economic depression, Jacob Hirsch loses his job with the banking industry. Desperate for work, the widower rides the rails west from Chicago with his four-year-old daughter, Cassie. When their train is derailed in a flood outside Homestead, Iowa, the communal Amana Society settled there rallies around the newcomers. Liesel, a young Amana woman, takes Cassie under her wing at the Amana Kinderschule and the Homestead elders offer Jacob work. But when the elders recognize Jacobs interest in the engaged Liesel, they ask him to leave the colony. Will Jacob choose to stay in the only place thats felt like homeif it means he must give up the woman hes come to love?
title: The Stranger