Pelican Road - Couverture rigide

From the acclaimed author of The Judas Field, a beautiful and haunting portrait of the men who served on the great American railroads.

It’s Christmas Eve, 1940. Along an isolated stretch of railway between Meridian, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana, two locomotives travel toward one another through the dark winter landscape. A.P. Dunn, engineer aboard the 4512 southbound freight, reminisces about the last trip he made through the snow. And though he can remember every detail about that voyage in 1923, what he can’t recall are the events of a few hours ago — where he ate breakfast, how he got the gash on his forehead, or what he did to make his crew treat him so strangely.

On the northbound Silver Star, a luxury passenger train packed with returning college students and gift-bearing families, brakeman Artemus Kane has his own memories to contend with: French trenches and German snipers, a failed marriage, and a too-short layover spent with Anna, the brilliant and lonely woman he has just left behind in the Crescent City.

In Pelican Road, Howard Bahr returns to his greatest theme — the tragic nobility of those attempting to overcome difficult situations through love, honor, and sacrifice — and shows that on the railway, catastrophe is never more than a distracted moment away.

“...re-creates this seminal moment in American history with prose that is vivid, unflinching, and often incantatory...Howard Bahr’s accomplishment is magnificent.”
—Washington Post Book World

“...a mature work of fiction by a gifted writer — affectingly eloquent and fearless of complexity and ambiguity...Bahr is a writer with a fluent lyric facility, subtly ensuring that the brutality of his narrative events never becomes numbing...a beautifully wrought novel that deserves a wide audience.”
—Los Angeles Times

“[Bahr] is a true poet of weather, of night and of time...Not since James Agee has someone made the Southern night so alive, so intimate, so orchestral...Along with the sweeping, cinematic story of rebellion, loyalty, revenge, and reawakened romance, Bahr’s evocation of place and time is the most enduring achievement of the novel.”
—New York Times

“Bahr masterfully portrays ordinary men [whose] belief in courage, honor, pride, and comrades sustains them but leaves them empty but for their terrible memories and grief...beautifully written...”
—Booklist