Train Dreams: A Novella [Paperback]

Now a major motion picture starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jonesstreaming on Netflix.

ANew York TimesNotable Book of the Year
AnEconomistBook of the Year
An NPR Top Ten Novel of the Year

From the National Book Awardwinning author Denis Johnson(Tree of Smoke) comesTrain Dreams, an epic in miniature, and one of Johnsons most evocative works of fiction.

Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American Westits otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge buildersthis extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

It tells the story of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth centuryan ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainier struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions.Denis Johnson(19492017) was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, five collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His novelTree of Smokewon the 2007 National Book Award.

[A] severely lovely tale . . . The visionary, miraculous element in Johnsons deceptively tough realism makes beautiful appearances in this book . . . I started readingTrain Dreamswith hoarded suspicion, and gradually gave it all away, in admiration of the storys unaffected tact and honesty.
James Wood,The New Yorker

National Book Award winner Johnson (Tree of Smoke) has skillfully packed an epic tale into novella length in this account of the life of Idaho Panhandle railroad laborer Robert Grainer . . . l6