My Life Before Me — Norah McClintock

Cady has always wanted to be a reporter, like her hero Nellie Bly, so after a fire burns down the orphanage she lives in, she's ready to leave small-town Ontario and make her mark as a newspaperwoman. A crumbling newspaper clipping leads her to Orrenstown, Indiana, where her investigation into a long-ago murder earns her a hard lesson in race relations. Smart and determined, and more than a little headstrong, Cady pokes a stick into a wasp's nest of lies, dirty politics, corrupt law enforcement and racial tension--and ends up fearing for her life as she closes in on something she's never cared about before--the truth about her own origins.

Part of the SECRETS--a series of seven linked novels that can be read in any order.