The Train to Estelline
Jane Roberts Wood, 2000
University of North Texas Press
209 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781574410785
Summary
"I have longed for a wider world, a great adventure. And now it's here. I'm so happy I can hardly breathe." so ends seventeen-year-old Lucinda Richards' diary entry for August 17, 1911, starting her job as the new school teacher for the White Star school in West Texas. Jane Roberts Wood brings this delightful and affecting epistolary novel a tender touch and a wry sense of humor.
The Lucinda Richards trilogy, spanning the years from 1911 to the 1930s, has a variety of landscapes, characters of all ages and social classes, an overall tenderness that never lapses into sentimentality, and a sense of the comic amidst the tragic.
(From the publisher.)
Train to Estelline (1987) is the first novel of the trilogy; A Place Called Sweet Shrub (1990), the second; and Dance a Little Longer (1993), the third.
Author Bio
Jane Roberts Wood received the Texas Institute of Letters award in 1998 for the Best Short Story, received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study at Yale, as well as a NEA Fellowship. A member of TIL and PEN, she lives with her husband, Dub, in Dallas, Texas. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
This is one of those books that is easy to get into, hard to get out of. Once started, it is nearly impossible to put down. Once put down, it is not easily forgotten.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
I ran [this book] through three generations of readers—mother, wife, and child—and unanimously they read it with pleasure.... Lucy is a young lady you need to know.
F. E. Abernethy - Texas Folklore Society
Written in 1993, 1990, and 1987, respectively, these novels are known as the Lucy Richards trilogy in honor of their central character. Spanning the years from 1911 to 1931, the story follows Lucy's life as a young school teacher in west Texas through marriage, childbirth, and the Great Depression. Through all the hardships, her indomitable spirit wins out. Good stories with a strong woman in the lead.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Train to Estelline:
1. The Train to Estelline is an epistolary novel—told through letters and diary entries. Why might Jane Roberts Wood have decided to use this format to tell her story? What, if any, advantages does it have over a first- or third-person narrative? (Consider, for instance, what Lucy reveals in her diary vs. what she writes in her letters.)
2. How would you describe Lucy as a character. Why is she so eager to accept her new teaching position? She is leaving her family, her mother in particular, at a difficult time. What obligations does she—or does she not—have toward her family?
3. Talk about Lucy's description of the Texas landscape, its flora and fauna, and how it changes as she views it through her train window. If you are from Texas, is that landscape very different today?
4. On page 9, Lucy watches a road grader as it smoothes a dirt road. In what way does she compare its work to her future job as a teacher?
5. What is it about Bob Sully that so attracts Lucy's attention and admiration? She has already decided that he is the one she wants to marry—is this a basis for a strong, lasting relationship?
6. How does Lucy's excitement about her adventure change when she arrives at the Dawsons? How does she view poverty and its impact on the human spirit?
7. Why does Lucy decide to save Carlos? Talk about her beautiful description (page 39) of how "that boy's sorrow seemed to fill and overflow the well." Toward the end, Carlos departs with his family, and Lucy says, "So Carlos has become a wanderer again. Did he always know that this was his destiny?" What do you think? What do you think might happen to Carolos and his family? Will he continue to read, do you think?
8. Josh Arnold speaks of the importance of water to the region. How is reverence for water reflected in the culture? What does Josh see as the future of the region through its use of water? Using the luxury of hindsight, was he correct in his predictions?
9. Lucy moves in with the Constables. How do they, especially Christobel and her healing knowledge, differ from the Dawsons? What different aspects of Texas early settlement might the two families represent? What do you make of the rumors circulating about the Costables' thievery. Does Josh believe seem to them? Does the possibility of the rumors' truth alter your view of them?
10. Talk about the two men in Lucy's life: Bob Sully and Josh Arnold. What do you think of them?
11. Why is Lucy disappointed by the Christmas party at the Sully's? What was she hoping for? What also does she notice at the party?
12. Comment on Christobel's advice to Lucy: "be careful what you want. Sometimes a young girl...does not always know." What is Christobel suggesting?
13. Discuss the incident of Petey and Lucy's shawl. When Christobel eventually finds him in Boston, how and why has he changed?
14. What is Lucy's view of women and their power or lack of it? (See page 100.)
15. When Berl Monday leaves the message that his mother has died, Lucy feels guilt, believing she could have done more to help. How responsible is Lucy for her death?
16. Are you sympathetic with Katie's dilemma? Does that make her betrayal of Lucy less heinous in your eyes? At one point, after their auto accident, Katie tells Lucy, "I was counting on Cable"...meaning what? Were there other clues along the way...or were you (along with Lucy) caught off guard?
17. Are you satisfied with the way the first part of this trilogy ends? What do you predict might happen in the second part? Are you inspired to read the next two installments—A Place Called Sweet Shrub and Dance a Little Longer?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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