Sky Blue Waters Press/The Skeleton Train

SKY BLUE WATERS PRESS

Jason Audley narrates his story. It begins when he is fourteen, living in a new suburban development in an industrial Illinois town. He meets a new neighbor, a boy his own age. Davey Miller is good looking and likable—everything that Jason is not. As Jason’s family life spirals down, quickly followed by his school life, he finds himself a social pariah, someone Davey Miller ignores. But away from school, Davey and Jason have a quiet friendship, based on the one thing they have in common: a love of hopping freight trains.

Jason’s world centers on weeks with his father in a broken-down trailer home, and weekends with his mother, who lives with her lover, the acerbic poet Anna Bella. The center of social life is the restaurant where he washes dishes, chugs leftover drinks and becomes the favorite of a combative waitress, Cherry. Jason—awkward, quiet, poorly dressed—spends much of his time reading. He’s an indiscriminate reader, but, whatever it is, he absorbs it.

As the narrative progresses, Jason and Davey concoct increasingly audacious freight train travel. Along the way, they meet others, including a young woman who calls herself The Phaedra. She’s both alluring and frightening and tells many conflicting stories about herself. They also meet Rommel, an explosive, ragged man who claims to be a member of the Freight Train Riders of America (The FTRA is a real organization, a kind of Hell’s Angels on the rails, with perhaps an even greater reputation for violence).

Jason, Davey, and The Phaedra encounter Rommel as they ride a train back to Illinois after visiting Hannibal, Missouri. Rommel abducts The Phaedra.

The boys set off to find and rescue The Phaedra. This disastrous quest helps Jason find his moral center, Davey lose his, and eventually draw together the disparate elements of Jason’s internal and external life.

Now on the market!

New from Minnesota author Craig J. Hansen

The Skeleton Train tells the story of Jason Audley, a modern Huck Finn. Jason is a character that readers know (or may have been). Alienated and lonely, capable but doubting, he’s a young man on the margins, a ghost to the mainstream. Yet inside he’s wry, reflective, inquisitive, sometimes daring. The novel combines Jason’s wild quest for a missing girl with his internal quest for understanding. Along the way, Jason encounters other sojourners—some helpful, some dangerous--and he has to choose his own way among them. Ultimately, Jason’s decisions have life and death consequences.

About the Author

Craig J. Hansen earned his doctorate from the University of Minnesota and is a professor in the Department of Communication, Writing, and the Arts at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has published short stories and a variety of academic works. This is his first novel. He grew up in Peoria, Illinois, and now lives with his wife in Stillwater, Minnesota.

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