Train Dreams

By Denis Johnson

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Denis Johnson's novella follows Robert Grainier, an orphan who arrives in the Idaho Panhandle as a boy and spends his working years as a day laborer in the forests of the American West, on railroad and logging crews. Grainier marries Gladys, and they raise a daughter, Kate, in a cabin by a river until a wildfire upends his life. The story follows his long, solitary years as the country changes. First published in The Paris Review in 2002, it appeared as a book in 2011.

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