Tomorrow, The River — Dianne E. Gray

A teenage girl embarks on an adventure across America and down the Mississippi in this YA historical novel by the author of Together Apart.

1896. With a long list of her mother's dos and don'ts swirling in her head, fourteen-year-old Megan Barnett boards the eastbound train for Burlington, Iowa. Her destination, the Mississippi River, is twenty-four hours and a host of unfamiliar seatmates away. The most pleasant of these characters is Horace, an engineering student whose passion for newspapers, combined with a sharp curve of the tracks, land him nearly in Megan's lap.

The parade of interesting strangers -- some of whom aren't what they seem -- doesn't end with Megan's arrival in Burlington. There she joins her sister's family on a riverboat called the Oh My. River travel, as Megan quickly learns, is fraught with danger, both on the water and off. A keen eye for seeing beneath the surface of things can make all the difference.

Leaving a trail of discarded rules and newspaper headlines in her wake, Megan takes on the river and reaps its rewards.