The Library Journal
"Cummins inhabits the mind of a small child and gives him voice as few writers could."
Kirkus Reviews
"First novelist Cummins audaciously enters the mind of a young boy afflicted by tragedy and chronic disease. The Snow Train is written with an artist's inspired touch."
Publishers Weekly
"Cummins employs a daring, high-risk conceit [capturing] the vibrant, surreal and highly insecure world of a small child.... He is to be commended for the way he illuminates the terrors of childhood--both real and imagined."
David Rosen, Editor-at-Large, Quality Paperback Book Club (The Snow Train is an alternate selection of Book-of-the-Month Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, and One Spirit Book Club)
"Remarkable, how Joseph Cummins has crafted (channeled?) with utter clarity the impressionistic voice, perceptions, physicality, and emotional life of a child. How the grown-up world careens and floats and slams into you; how hard it is to make sense of adults and other kids; how hard it is to calm yourself down at night, and then what a relief and shock when sleep comes;how the snow falling outside your window can make/save your life; how everything can change so suddenly from being left out to not being left alone...."
Kaylie Jones
"A groundbreaking first novel that tackles nothing less daunting than the fragile psyche of early childhood."
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Joseph Cummins, The Snow Train
 Book
Description
Joseph Cummins's powerful and poignant debut novel The Snow Train
begins in 1952, in Michigan, and tells the story of a young boy whose sister
is killed in a car accident, and who is haunted for years to come by her
death. Its emotional impact and authenticity of tone have drawn comparisons
to Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, Truman Capote's The Grass Harp, and
Lisa Shea's now-classic Hula.
As the novel begins, Robbie O'Conor and his sister Rosemary live
together in a small house in suburban Detroit. Their mother writes poetry
for The Michigan Catholic, their father sells big, finned cars for the Ford
Motor company, and their quiet neighborhood sleeps mysteriously under thick
blankets of snow.
When Rosemary dies suddenly, Robbie's parents are too distraught to
help him, and he must learn on his own how to grieve his sister. But how
does a small child mourn? This simple but haunting question is at the heart
of The Snow Train.
Moving between the time of Rosemary's death and the moment, five
years later, when Robbie enters a hospital for treatment of a potentially
fatal disease, The Snow Train probes corners of childhood which adults can
rarely reach. Robbie comes into his own in a ward full of sick children who
create a world unto themselves--a world replete with danger, but also
redemption. In the end, The Snow Train teaches the reader powerful truths
about the endless gathering of losses--the accumulation of constantly
shifting insecurities, fantasies, illusions--that growing up entails.
Author's
Bio
Joseph Cummins was born in Detroit, received an MFA in Writing from Columbia
University, and now lives in New Jersey. He is married to the actress Dede
Kinerk,and has a two-year-old daughter, Carson. He can be reached at
jscummins@earthlink.net. |
