Pelican Road

<Early on the morning of Christmas Eve 1940 Artemus Kane leaves his sweetheart's New Orleans flat to catch the northbound Silver Star a first-class passenger train on the Southern Railway. Artemus a brakeman will help bring the train to Meridian Mississippi a 180-mile journey along what the railroad men call Pelican Road. Meanwhile in the Meridian yard conductor Frank Smith awakes in his caboose. A few hours later Smith will take charge of a fast freight train southbound for the Crescent City.Smith and Kane who served together in the Marine Corps during World War I are old comrades. Their friendship flourishes amid the community of railroad men who work along Pelican Road-a brotherhood whose lives are spent among the lights and shadows the danger and humor and violence and the loneliness and camaraderie of railroad work. On this Christmas Eve however Smith and Kane are each bound on a journey that will alter their lives forever.<i>Pelican Road</i> is a novel played out against the landscape of a vanished way of life. Howard Bahr who worked as a brakeman and yard clerk in the twilight years of old-time railroading brings the authenticity of experience to his narrative. <i>Pelican Road</i> however seems more than a railroad adventure story. At its heart the novel is about friendship and love about men and women who persevere in the face of hardship and danger and who in the end find redemption in each other.