It's 1942 and America is at war. A sense of peril and wartime shortages have reached even the small town of Fort Benton, Montana, where 13-ear-old Ben Colby is growing up. Ben is in love for the first time, with Ellie Beck, a high-school beauty who is three years older than Ben. But that’s not the only dilemma Ben is facing. When he learns that one of his mother’s old boyfriends has moved to town, he worries about what that might mean for his parents’ seemingly shaking marriage. Everyone is nearly frantic about the polio epidemic that is raging through the town. In the midst of all this, Ben tries to befriend a stray sheepdog that no one has ever been able to win over a dog that remains fiercely loyal to its previous master.
Cold Train Coming captures the essence of a simpler time in American history, a setting in which a boy struggles to understand a looming adult world that is overwhelming and mysterious. Filled with humor and emotion, Cold Train Coming is a nostalgic, coming-of-age story that will take you back to the bittersweet days of adolescence, when summer was endless, first love was both thrilling and frustrating, and the future was as exciting as it was uncertain.
It's 1942 and America is at war. A sense of peril and wartime shortages have reached even the small town of Fort Benton, Montana, where 13-ear-old Ben Colby is growing up. Ben is in love for the first time, with Ellie Beck, a high-school beauty who is three years older than Ben. But that’s not the only dilemma Ben is facing. When he learns that one of his mother’s old boyfriends has moved to town, he worries about what that might mean for his parents’ seemingly shaking marriage. Everyone is nearly frantic about the polio epidemic that is raging through the town. In the midst of all this, Ben tries to befriend a stray sheepdog that no one has ever been able to win over a dog that remains fiercely loyal to its previous master.
Cold Train Coming captures the essence of a simpler time in American history, a setting in which a boy struggles to understand a looming adult world that is overwhelming and mysterious. Filled with humor and emotion, Cold Train Coming is a nostalgic, coming-of-age story that will take you back to the bittersweet days of adolescence, when summer was endless, first love was both thrilling and frustrating, and the future was as exciting as it was uncertain.