Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

 

This novella tells the story of Robert Grainger, a man who is one of those who settle the West.  He marries but there is no work where he builds their cabin so he goes every summer further out West to work as a logger.  That money will hold him, his wife and baby daughter until the next summer.

One year when he comes home, it is to find that a fire has devastated the town and its outlying forest.  He goes to his cabin to find it in ashes and no sign of his wife and daughter.  He spends weeks looking for them, traveling to different towns in the area to see if anyone knows what happened to them but has no luck discovering them.  He has a dream that his wife died by drowning but that the baby survived and when the townspeople later talk about a 'wolf-girl' he wonders if that is his child.

Over the years, as he gets older, he has to give up logging.  He works as a carter transporting goods for various people and any other jobs he can find.  His is a bleak life but he learns to make it enough for him.

Denis Johnson is an American author who also wrote poetry.  This novella describes the rough life of the settlers in the West.  It also talks about the Chinese immigrants brought to the country to build the railroads then discriminated against once that work was done, the necessity of men being able to be a jack of all trades, the rough winters and hunger that often occurred and other features of life in that era.  It was a New York Times Notable Book as well as one of NPR's Best Novels of the year.  This book is recommended for readers of literary and historical fiction.