Roger A. Smith

Rule number one of the Underground Railroad: If someone doesn’t need to know something, don’t tell them. Philadelphia, 1835. The journey begins. Kicked out of her third school for fighting, 11-year-old tomboy Rian Krieger gets an unanticipated education in her father’s factories. The City...

Philadelphia, 1837. On six occasions, twelve-year-old tomboy Rian Krieger has escorted self-emancipated fugitives to the next station on their flight from enslavement. When Rian’s father, factory owner Otto Krieger, learns that she is a conductor on the Underground Railroad, he renews his...

1838 St. Petersburg, Russia’s Window to the West. Thirteen-year-old tomboy Rian Krieger has run away to Russia to help her uncle and cousin build a railroad for Tsar Nicholas I. But there’s a problem: Rian is posing as her uncle’s coachman, a boy. The Tsar takes note of Rian’s bravery...