When I reviewed Laurie Loewenstein’s Death of a Rainmaker in 2018, I considered it one of the best books I read that year, and it went on Library Journal‘s Best Books list. Funeral Train, the sequel, is another atmospheric novel, although it doesn’t seem to have quite the same impact as Loewenstein’s first book about the Dust Bowl and Great Depression in Oklahoma.
Vermillion, Oklahoma’s Sheriff Temple Jennings is eager to see his wife, Etha, again after her six-day visit to St. Louis. When the train wrecks, Temple loses all control until his deputy reminds him he has to take charge, and tells him to start acting like the sheriff, not a panicked husband. After he finds Etha in the hospital, he can turn his attention to teaming up with the railroad detective to find the cause of the accident.
It doesn’t take long to discover someone sabotaged the tracks, but during the Depression, with so many drifters, it will take a while to find the perpetrator. Someone, though, has a clue. A woman living close to the tracks ran into a man one night while she was walking her dog, and he threw away a key she found, and hid. That may be the key to the train wreck, as well as a murder in town. Several crimes lead Temple and Etha, along with the deputies, to piece together a story of desperation and violence.
Loewenstein does a marvelous job with the details of the train wreck and the conditions in the hospital. The characters are just as fascinating as the ones in the earlier book. The anguish and struggles of the Dust Bowl and Depression years are vividly depicted in this historical mystery. And, I still recommend Death of a Rainmaker to readers looking for an excellent historical mystery.
Laurie Loewenstein’s website is https://laurieloewenstein.com/
Funeral Train by Laurie Loewenstein. Akashic Books, 2022. ISBN 9781636140513 (hardcover), 264p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I read a galley for a journal review.
