"From their earliest years, five very different girls were as close as sisters--sharing everything, even secrets and lies--until their friendship and their lives were ripped apart by a devastating act of betrayal from one of their own. Twenty years have gone by, and one woman has more cause to regret her estrangement from the group than the rest. An old promise leads to a reunion, which unearths memories, mistrust, and hidden agendas as the former...

"It might have been the Gilded Age for the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie but newly arrived immigrants and poverty-stricken Americans packed into Manhattan s teeming Lower Eastside were lucky to make ends meet. In this tumultuous time, factory worker Virginia Chisholm hopes for more, but her dreams go up in smoke when a tenement blaze rips her family apart. Aided by Lindsay Killian, the street-wise, rail-riding drifter she meets in a charity hospital,...