"In the summer of 1917 Robert Grainier took part in an attempt on the life of a Chinese laborer caught, or anyway accused of, stealing from the company stores of the Spokane International Railway in the Idaho Panhandle." —So begins Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, a beautiful and haunting story of a life and times."

"This book feels less like a novella and more a long prose poem. Page after page, paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence, this book is just one of the most beautifully written texts I've encountered in a long time. Ostensibly the story of a railroad worker named Robert Grainer, rather it tells the story of a time of immense change at the beginning of the twentieth century. Johnson does this in such exquisite detail that it feels as rich as a contemporary account."