- Writing
- Story
David Rowell has turned flipped the American novel on its head with The Train of Small Mercies.
Set in the wake of the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, Rowell’s first novel delves into the often overlooked territory of what happens next. We all know the epilogue version—Vice President Hubert Humphrey gets the Democratic nomination but loses the election to Richard Nixon—but here we are given a look into the lives of a cast of average Americans on the day of his funeral. Along the route of Kennedy’s funeral train—running from New York City to Washington D.C.—Rowell peeks into the lives of the people paying their respects and finding new ways to live in a period of terrific change.
Rowell’s ensemble cast come from each state (and territory) along the route, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington D.C. Each tale is compelling in its own right, with some link to Kennedy and his policies, a quest to see the train bearing his body, and each undergoing a dramatic change in their own right. In New York we meet young Lionel Chase. Lionel is benefitting from the gains the civil rights movement has gained in the last decade. He is studying at Winston-Salem State at North Carolina, he has a girlfriend there, and his dream is to write comic books. However, at this moment, he is home for the summer and working as a porter for the Penn Central Railroad in the footsteps of his father. His first day lands him on the Kennedy Funeral Train
In New Jersey, Michael Colvert is young boy, just through the fifth grade, stuck in the middle of his parents’ divorce. His father tookhim out of class one day a few weeks before the school year was over and took him to a remote cabin in Michigan. Michael believed it to be a fishing trip all along, but in New Jersey his mother and his friends believed him to be kidnapped. He has since been returned but is still not back to normal.
Delores King from Pennsylvania has set off with the other Rotary Club wives to watch the passing train. Because her husband, Arch, is hostile to liberals (especially the Kennedys) and the other, more educated and wealthy members of the Rotary Club, Delores has lied about her plans for the day, dropped her sons off at Arch’s mothers, and has taken with her the only member of the family with whom she can relate, her daughter Rebecca.
Edwin Rupp has just installed an above-ground pool at his house in Delaware. It is his pride and joy. His wife Lolly is not nearly so excited, but they have not seen eye to eye on too much lately. Edwin has invited his old friend, Ted, and Ted’s beautiful girlfriend Georgia over for a small party to celebrate the opening of the pool.
In Maryland, the West family is still adjusting to life after Jamie has returned from Vietnam minus a leg. The passing of Robert Kennedy’s train is the topic of discussion at breakfast—they can see the rails from the backyard—but on their minds is a pending interview Jamie has been asked to do for the local paper. As it turns out, the reporter, Roy Murphy, had gone to high school with Jamie and was close friends with Jamie’s girlfriend Claire Payton, a fact that had always annoyed Jamie.
In Washington D.C., Maeve McDerdon is in town to interview for a nanny position with the Kennedy family. She seeks council from the hotel concierge Earl Hinton, an African American man who has worked at the hotel since the thirties, earning his way up from bell boy to concierge and who has acted fatherly to the young, inexperienced Irishwoman who is enjoying her first taste of freedom.
Rowell’s novel is, in many ways, about the end of an era. The hopeful idealism was beginning to falter against the realities of life. Edwin and Lolly had once been idealists. Edwin still smokes marijuana with his friend Ted and they groove to the tunes of the Doors, but now it is at Edwin’s suburban home, with his above-ground pool announcing his status in the neighborhood. Delores shows a great capacity for love and compassion, but her marriage to Arch has turned into a prison, where her friends and her politics are subject to his approval. Lionel Chase has nearly made good, a college student with a steady girlfriend, but being in Washington D.C. for barely an hour and reality comes crashing in. That Kennedy garnered so much support in light of his policies for Civil Rights, for the poor, against the war, etc. shows where the country was heading, but as Lionel and Delores learn, there was much work yet to be done.
The Train of Small Mercies is quite appropriate as a title as it is the small moments that propel Rowell’s character through the day, with little offered in the way of lasting solutions. Several times the thoughts turn to Robert Kennedy’s wife Ethel and how she might be coping and the answer, as well as the answer to all their experiences, lies in the small mercies and little reliefs that occur every day. I hardly consider it a spoiler to say that the stories presented are not wrapped up neatly. In fact, all the endings are open ended. The closest proxy that comes to mind is the end of The Italian Job (the Michael Caine one) where the bus is hanging off a cliff with the loot on the suspended end and just before the screen goes black Caine says, “I have an idea”. Each of the narrative arcs here end much the same way, teetering on the brink of disaster but with a glimmer of hope.
There is little to dislike in The Train of Small Mercies. The perspective jumps from state to state and back but never gets confusing, the characters are accessible and convincing, and the story rolls on with the easy pace of the slow-moving train. There is something beautiful in the inherent humanity of each of Rowell’sc haracters. Most can be called good people, but all of them falter, they make poor decisions, they have moments of selfishness and pettiness, but they also have their moments of great tenderness and compassion. The varied perspectives get a little disconcerting toward the end. Some storylines wrap well before others and these endings are not obvious. Reaching the last page was the first time it occurred to me that the end of the New Jersey thread was forty pages ago, and the Delaware arc thirty pages before that. Thinking back, they are fine endings, but in the middle of reading I was still expecting to find more Edwin and Michael in the last fifth of the book. All things considered, The Train of Small Mercies is a nice read, something devoid of the graphic violence or the eccentricities many books fall back on these days.
