Fiction excerpt; Northwestern Ohio, summer 1938
“The train marked the passing of time on the farm. When another train went by you knew a certain span of time had passed. They broke the days for the men in the fields in sections, made the girls look up from their work in the kitchen until their mother clicked her tongue at them and stared at them to make them get back to work. When they came through at night you could hear their whistle, long and high across the sleeping countryside. When the girl lay in her bed with her blankets tucked around her, she could hear them, that long lonesome sound, and it made something in her blood tremble with the wistfulness of it. It made her want to run, want to fly, want to curl up under her covers in a ball, want to cry. The trains came through so often that sometimes you didn’t even notice. They were just another sound, like the crowing of the rooster and the lowing of the cows and the beating of a heart.”