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Long Train Passing



At times, my fascination to stories associated to the literal warfare is quite trifling. But with my career as a writer, I have not enough choices other than read and decipher hundreds of war-inspired biographic accounts and excruciating memoirs that would connect me to the world wars and other notable battles in history. These accounts depict unnerving bloodshed, miserable broken homes, desolate nations, and heart-rending visages of people in anguish until peace is secured.
When I began reading Long Train Passing by Steven W. Wise, I thought it was lackluster and monotonous. However, when the storyline unraveled progressively, I found something worthy of note. It is not the typical narrative set against the backdrop of World War II and the Korean War; it is something more intense, with flashbacks sporadically taking me to the past where touching scenes happened—poignant and deeper than the images of war. Here, I was caught unguarded by the painful reality that a father is capable of proscribing his son’s freedom and desire to discover himself, his gifts, his true spirit, and embrace what the world can offer to develop his very young life—and let him live for his dreams. But then I was inspired to uncover the boy’s heroes in the characters of Annabelle Allen and Emmett.
In this moving and thought-provoking tale, you will be drawn to its brimming emotions from when you meet with Annabelle, the teacher who explicitly empathizes what loneliness and exclusion can make of a fragile heart, to the twists and turns of events. Being physically misshapen by a childhood accident, she knows how grueling and tormenting it is to be different. Despite her ordeals, she outshone her eccentricity to become an inspiration to others. Little did she know that her life is yet to face more challenges and drastic changes when Jewell Cole—an intelligent pupil—enters her classroom. He is the boy who hurdles the emotional torture by his cruel and vicious father, Jubal Cole.
It wasn’t a good start for Annabelle and Jewell. But together with Emmett, the grave digger, they do their best to give Jewell the love and care that his father deprived him, and with that, he begins to open his life, learns about love and forgiveness, and believes that he is capable of dreaming as big as the sky. Where this story will take you is a challenge.
Unraveling the metaphors of life, telling a sensible story of love affair between two handicapped beings, and a young boy’s struggles, the book concludes in a powerfully inspiring, passionate and a little nostalgic way.





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