Two Trains Running [Hardcover]

Lucius Shepard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

This collection of fact and fiction was inspired by the time science fiction writer Lucius Shepard spent with Missoula Mike, Madcat, and other members of a controversial brotherhood known as the Freight Train Riders of America. Shepard rode the rails throughout the western half of the United States with the disenfranchised, the homeless, the punks, the gangs, and the joy riders for the magazine article 'The FTRA Story'. That original article is presented here, along with two new hobo novellas, 'Over Yonder' and 'Jailbait'. In 'Over Yonder', alcoholic Billy Long Gone finds himself on an unusual train. As Billy travels his health improves and his thinking clears, and he arrives in Yonder - an unlikely paradise where a few hundred hobos live in apparent peace and tranquillity. But every paradise has its price, and in Yonder, peace and tranquillity breed complacency and startling deaths. 'Jailbait' is a hardcore tale of deception, lust, revenge, and murder in the seedy underbelly of rail yards and train hopping. Madcat, who functions best in a whiskey-induced haze, must decide between solitude and companionship when he meets up with Grace, an underaged runaway. Grace, in turn, seeks the security of an older man and the life about which only young girls can dream.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this fascinating excursion into modern mythmaking, Shepard (Louisiana Breakdown) draws on his experiences in the late 1990s riding the railroad and researching an apocryphal "hobo mafia" that dubbed itself the FTRA (Freight Train Riders of America) and who were suspects in a number of unsolved murders along America's rail lines. "The FTRA Story," an essay, introduces some of the colorful drifters Shepard shared boxcars with, tempering the romance of the nomadic hobo life with a gritty appraisal of its harsh realities and dangers. He reshapes nuggets of lore from this essay for the two stories that follow, adding luster to their depictions of rail hobos as everymen (and -women) embarked on odysseys of self-discovery and redemption. In "Over Yonder," trainhoppers end up in a limbo-like alternate world whose primal challenges prove important tests for determining whether they are worthy of personal salvation. "Jailbait" (original to the book) concerns a hobo couple whose growing intimacy results in personal transformations that subtly shift the foundations of reality. Shepard effortlessly works the potential for supernatural experience into the unpredictability of his social outcasts' fringe existence. The stories are fantasy writing at its best, in which, as one character puts it, "even the most familiar articles of your life could be turned on their sides, shifted, examined in new light, and seen in relation to every other thing, and thus were possessed of a universality that made them, ultimately, unknowable."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the 1990s, a contract with Spin magazine obliged Shepard to ride the rails. He found contemporary train tramps different from the hoboes of legend. Seldom really homeless or impoverished, they were antisocial dropouts, lazy and substance abusing. Frequent victims of law enforcers and violent fellow tramps, they were hardly easygoing. This book contains the long version of the Spin piece and two stories. "Jailbait" is an edgy 22-pager about the liaison between Madcat, a screw-top wine drinker who ran after beating up the cop who was his wife's back-door man, and a teenage girl riding the rails for the first time. "Over Yonder" is a novella about a drunken tramp who hops a black train that carries him to a place beyond this world--but not at the end of all the lines, which he may be approaching at the story's end. The novella is Shepard's forte, and this guardedly optimistic yarn is almost as good as his contributions to Night Visions 11 [BKL D 1 03] and The Dark [BKL N 1 03]. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 125 pages
• Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930846231
• ISBN-13: 978-1930846234
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,540,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With realistic dialogue and following flawed characters, April 3, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Two Trains Running (Hardcover)

Author Lucius Shepard personally experienced life riding the rails when he investigated the Freight Train Riders of America for "Spin" magazine. Two Trains Running is a collection of his fictionalized stories based on the experiences he gained from personally living among a vagabond culture. Gripping, with realistic dialogue and following flawed characters struggling to make sense out of life, Two Trains Running is an unforgettable, highly recommended read that fairly pulses with the raw power of reality.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars expected more, May 14, 2005

By 

reader from maryland (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Two Trains Running (Hardcover)

Here's a suggestion: Consider reading the two fiction selections in this book first, then read the essay on the Freight Train Riders of America(FTRA). I read the book cover to cover and I think Lucius Shepard scoops himself by detailing too much in the essay. As a result the fiction stories had less impact. The essay is a fascinating account of his time riding freight trains across America while researching the FTRA, which is rumored to be a highly organized crime ring consisting of hobos operating out of train switch yards across the country. Shepard found little of this organization and many more lost and broken souls. He used this research to craft two stories; Jailbait and Over Yonder. Both are good reads and reminiscent of an inward turning Theodore Sturgeon story. However neither one lived up to my expectations as I had enjoyed other Lucius Shepard stories in the past. Again I think much of the characterization was blunted by the superb descriptions of real people that are found in the earlier essay.

Over Yonder is about Billy Long Gone. A loner that hops a phantom train to a land of hobo limbo where everyone is cured of their physical addictions. He soon realizes that he not much better off than before and in the end he opts for a dangerous ride into the ghoulish unknown. This story has a fantasy element so the entire collection is categorized as science fiction and Fantasy, where Mr. Shepard has produced many works, but it could easily be considered general fiction. Jailbait is about another loner, Madcat, that is on the run from the law. He hooks up with an under aged girl, and first time train rider, who has just seen murder. I liked the way the young girl is portrayed, we don't quite know her motives and Shepard weaves some elements of the divine into her scenes so that the reader is not sure if she is savior or devil. All together good but I expected more.