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The Train of Small Mercies

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

In haunting and crystalline prose, The Train of Small Mercies follows six characters' intrepid search for hope among the debris of an American tragedy.

In New York, a young black porter struggles through his first day on the job—a staggering assignment aboard Robert F. Kennedy's funeral train. In Pennsylvania, a woman creates a tangle of lies to sneak away from her disapproving husband and pay her respects to the slain senator, dragging her child with her. In Maryland, a wounded young soldier awaits a news­paper interview that his parents hope will restore his damaged self-esteem. In Washington, an Irish nanny in town to in­terview with the Kennedy family must reconcile the lost oppor­tunity and the chance to start her life anew.

In this stunning debut, Rowell depicts disparate lives united by an extraordinary commemoration, irrevocably changed as the Kennedy funeral train makes its solemn journey from New York to Washington.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 29, 2011
      Set in June 1968, Rowell’s first novel revolves around the solemn train journey that brought the body of slain Sen. Robert Kennedy from Penn Station to Washington, D.C., for burial. Of the many people who gathered along the way to watch the train pass (famously captured by photographer Paul Fusco), Rowell focuses on a handful of stories. Following long tradition and in his father’s footsteps, Lionel Chase reports for his first day’s work as a Pullman porter on the funeral train itself; Irish nanny Maeve McDerdon has come to D.C. to interview for a position with Ethel Kennedy, and with the loss of that opportunity finds herself adrift; Delores King is determined to see the train pass, but to do so she must deceive Arch, her disapproving husband; fifth-grader Michael Colvert is coping with a private trauma of his own; while veteran Jamie West, who recently returned from Vietnam minus a leg, waits for a newspaper reporter who will write a story that may help Jamie heal, or add insult to injury. Though Rowell is a respected journalist, he has a novelist’s eye for the crucial, telling detail. In clean, elegant prose he recreates the lives of individuals mired in one of the most turbulent years of the century.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Robert F. Kennedy was about hope. This is the message that comes from David Rowell's novel about the day Kennedy's funeral train traveled from New York to Arlington, Virginia. Narrator Jeremy Davidson does some virtuoso voice work for the many people touched by the day's journey. They include an Irish nanny who is in Washington for a job interview, a new train porter whose chivalry becomes hazardous, a wounded soldier, and a woman who is dealing with her daughter's playground fall. Davidson keeps listeners interested as Rowell's narrative continually shifts from scene to scene. The events in the daily lives Rowell creates take center stage in this snapshot of a turbulent time in American history. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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