The Train of Small Mercies

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.