In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett...

Inspired by a love of trains and the nature of love, a series of intertwined romantic tales follows the experiences of four strangers traveling from Edinburgh to London who entertain each other with reminiscences about how trains have changed their lives.

Honeymooning aboard a historic former tea-smuggling train, newlyweds Otto and Xavier enjoy the locomotive's fantastical accommodations before encountering a secretive fellow passenger, who imparts a surprising message.

After learning of his grandmother’s caretaker’s supposedly accidental death after falling down a well, Krishan makes the journey from Columbo into the war-torn Northern Province for the funeral in this fictional account of Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war.

After losing his college scholarship, Arthur discovers a journal written by his deceased grandfather and decides to follow the train route to the destination mentioned in the last sentence of the journal.

Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln's funeral train, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face...