Throw the Devil off the Train — Stephen A. Bly

Catherine Goodwin and her identical twin sister Catelynn grew up in the genteel world of the antebellum South. As the Civil War loomed, Mrs. Goodwin convinced her husband to send the twins to her sister's in Boston. Though both of their parents perished, the girls never found out until the end of the war.

Unable to settle her parents' estate and estranged from her sister, Catherine finally decided to go to California where Philip Draper, her lifelong friend, owned a thriving grocery store and ended each of his letters with "when are you coming to California to marry me?" Though she wasn't sure she loved Philip, she had few options, so she sold her few possessions and scraped together enough money to reach California by train. Finally, Catherine would find some stability in her life. But on the trip West, a man offered Catherine $20 to give him a tearful kiss goodbye so that he could win a bet. Hoping to use the money to upgrade her ticket to a Pullman car for the long ride to California, Catherine agrees, setting off a sequence of events that will change the course of her life forever.