Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson the author who had previously won The National Book Award for His Vietnam novel Tree of Smoke recently published a short novella called Train Dreams.

The story which I read last night in an hour or so tells the tale of Robert Grainer a turn of the century day laborer in the Northern Rockies. Living his life in area from Idaho, Montana into the Pacific Northwest.

We learn much in one hundred pages,we see Grainer adopted but he knows not from where. He does not remember. We see him marry and then face tragedy. We see him grow old. Throughout the story their are trains. Trains he rides in, trains that paa through the valley. Trains that being him to his new home when a child. It is a story told in evocative prose. It is pretty. For me who yearns, or thinks he yearns, for a simpler time this is a wonderful story.

I enjoyed it very much and when I laid down at 2 am after reading it I felt peaceful. A great story