No Man of Her Own

Plots: A pregnant woman adopts the identity of a railroad-crash victim and starts a new life with the woman’s wealthy in-laws, but is soon blackmailed by her devious ex. In a mansion in Caulfield, Illinois, Patrice and Bill Harkness are waiting for the police. Meanwhile, she recalls her life in San Francisco. Eight-months-pregnant Helen Ferguson is dumped by her boyfriend, the crook Stephen ‘Steve’ Morley, who gives her a train ticket to New York to stay with his new girlfriend. On the train, Helen befriends the also-pregnant Patrice Harkness and her husband Hugh Harkness, who are returning from Europe. When they go to the toilet, Patrice asks Helen to hold her wedding ring to avoid losing it, but there is an accident and only Helen survives. She is mistaken by the Harkness family as being Patrice and welcomed by Mrs. Harkness, Mr. Harkness and Bill at home. Helen decides to pose as Patrice, and the family treats her like a daughter. Out of the blue, Steve meets Helen in a club and blackmails her, promising to destroy the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Harkness. Now Helen realizes that she must kill Steve to protect her son and the old couple. What will she do? Eight months pregnant, penniless Helen Ferguson is on a train from New York City to her hometown of San Francisco having been shunned by her former lover/the baby’s father, Stephen Morley, whose parting gift to her was this one-way economy train ticket arguably to get her out of his life for good. Following a serious train derailment, Helen awakens in the hospital learning that she has suffered some minor injuries, has given birth to a healthy baby boy, and that the authorities believe she is Patrice Harkness, who, along with her husband Hugh Harkness, Helen befriended on the train. With Patrice too at an advanced stage of pregnancy, the Harknesses were en route to Caulfield, IL to live with Hugh’s well-off family because of the baby, this the first time Patrice would have met them. Weighing the risks against the benefits, Helen, upon discovering that the Harknesses were actually both killed in the accident, decides to continue the ruse and pretend to be Patrice into meeting Hugh’s family in order to give her baby a better life than the nothing that would have been waiting for them in San Francisco. Through it all, Helen risks being discovered in this fraud in only knowing basic items about Hugh, Patrice and the Harknesses in general, and/or by her true past catching up with her. The situation is only complicated by Hugh’s brother, Bill Harkness, falling in love with who he believes is Patrice, and Helen in turn falling in love with him despite both fighting those feelings if only in respect for Hugh.