The first woman to go railroading on the Southern Pacific recounts her journey--the people who work on the trains, the craft of the railroader, the Western landscape that inspired her--providing an elegy to a dying trade This recollection of the author's ten years as a migratory brakeman for the railroad (a "boomer" who follows seasonal cycles of rush and recession around the country) can be appreciated on several levels. Certainly it is a remarkable adventure tale, the occupational odyssey of the Ph.D. in literature who immerses herself in blue-collar America. The book also reveals much about the state of the nation's railroads in the post-Reagan era: the hazards of the work, the safety violations, the compromises of the unions, the harrassment of women and minorities, the transient and often self-destructive lifestyles. At the same time, the author confronts herself, exploring her alcoholism and substance abuse; her difficulties with friends and lovers of both sexes; what it was in the life that attracted her in the first place; and more. The book does not conclude so much as stop, a chapter in an unfinished life. Highly recommended. - Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.