A listener note, Against the Odds uses dramatizations that are based on true events.

Some elements, including dialogue, may be invented, but everything is based on research.

This series contains depictions of violence and death involving children, and may not be suitable for everyone.

Twelve-year-old Lena Vibicki shivers as she wakes up from a fitful sleep.

She feels the winter sun on her face, but when she goes to open her eyes, she realizes that she can't.

They froze shut during the night. She reaches a hand to her face and peels off layers of ice.

She whimpers in pain, scratching away the ice tears the delicate skin of her eyelids.

She finally steals herself and tears the rest of the ice off all at once, letting out a sharp gasp.

But at last she can see.

The morning sun on the snow practically blinds her.

She squints as she gets to her feet, her joints throbbing.

It's just after sunrise on January 13, 1888. Lina stands in a field of

fresh snow outside Seward, Nebraska. Although the wind and snow have died down, it's still

brutally cold. Well below zero. When the blizzard struck yesterday, Lena left her schoolhouse in the

teeth of the storm to get home. An older boy named Lawrence was guiding her, but they got into

an argument about the best way to go. She veered off to cut across a field toward her foster

parents farmhouse while he continued down the road.

After that, her memory is hazy.

She remembers staggering back and forth in the whiteout,

unsure where the farmhouse was.

At some point, as darkness fell, she crumpled to the ground

and pulled her cloak over her head for the night. Maybe she should have gone with

...