By Mary Calhoun Brown

Synopsis:

There Are No Words is the story of Jaxon,  twelve-year-old girl who just happens to be autistic, and as a result, nonverbal. She lives with her aging grandparents in the reassuring routine they have established since her father’s death.

One afternoon, Jaxon discovers a faded newspaper clipping from the greatest train wreck in American history, and that discovery uniquely qualifies her for the adventure she is about to take.

Late one night Jaxon is whisked into the painting in her grandparents’ parlor, back to July of 1918, where she is miraculously able to speak for the first time. She meets three friends, Sarah Hale, Dewey MacKenzie and Oliver Pack.

Soon Jaxon realizes her mission in this world of horse drawn carts and prejudice is to save Oliver Pack from dying aboard one of the ill-fated trains. Sarah, Dewey and Jaxon sneak aboard the train from Memphis, which is carrying six wooden coaches filled with young black men, like Oliver, to Nashville to work making gun powder for the war effort.

With the U.S. government’s takeover of the railways during World War I, and a calamity of human error, the train cannot be stopped from its fate, and the responsibility of saving Oliver Pack is planted firmly on the shoulders of this remarkable new breed of hero.