Courting Miss Adelaide

Adelaide Crum runs a small hat shop in 1890s Noblesville, Indiana, and dreams of the family she's never had. When an orphan train brings homeless children to town, Adelaide is determined to adopt — only to be turned away by town elders who refuse to place a child with an unmarried woman.

Charles Graves, the town's newspaperman, carries his own wounds from a father who abandoned his family and has little faith left in second chances. But Adelaide's quiet determination and unshakeable faith soften him, and he becomes her unlikely ally in the fight to change the town's mind.

As Adelaide and Charles work together for her cause, their alliance grows into something neither expected — a story about women's rights, child welfare, and the redemptive power of love, and the first book in Janet Dean's Noblesville, Indiana series.