The Aldens spend their vacation in Elmford and get jobs at the old general store! But the girl they work with wont answer any questions about herself. What is she hiding?Gertrude Chandler Warner was born in 1890 in Putnam, Connecticut, where she taught school and wrote The Boxcar Children because she had often imagined how delightful it would be to live in a caboose or freight car. Encouraged by the book's success, she went on to write eighteen more stories about the Alden children.