From respectable station master's wife to secret madam, Alice was a woman of exceptional resourcefulness in the the face of upheaval, betrayal, and prejudice. In 1887, Ashland, Oregon, this daughter of a prominent pioneer family, witnessed the historic completion of the United States Transcontinental Railroad, a circle of steel that enveloped the United States, when the final Golden Spike was hammered in to place in this small Southern Oregon town. The rails changed everything for this previously isolated hamlet, as well as for Alice. Her family story revealing secret passions, the true grit of a single mother, and betrayals by men, is set among true historical events that span half a century. Meet bygone characters like the Father of the Blues, the inventor of the Curve Ball, the founder of a National Park, a lumber baron who profited from rebuilding San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, train robbers, bank robbers and sensational divorcees who impacted the turn of the 20th century.