TRAIN MUSIC

TRAIN MUSIC: A Romance of Old Missoula

Montana. 1969. One woman leaves everything she knows behind in search of a life of her own.

At twenty-eight, Alma Mortimer has spent most of her life watching the world through the pages of books. Then, on a bitter February morning, she makes a decision that will change everything: she leaves her small Montana hometown and heads for Missoula, carrying little more than an old typewriter, a notebook, and two impossible ambitions.

She wants to become a writer.

And she wants to finally experience the romantic and physical life she has only imagined.

But the Missoula she discovers is far more complicated than the mythical city she expected.

Set against the 1960s counterculture of Montana, Train Music takes Alma into a world of dimly lit bars, live music, hippies, writers, freight trains, cigarettes, whiskey, unconventional friendships, and people living on the edges of respectable society. There she becomes entangled in the lives of people who challenge everything she believes about love, desire, friendship, and herself.

Among them is Frank Pierce, a charismatic and troubled man whose life is anything but conventional, and Amber, a woman navigating her own complicated search for love, independence, and belonging. As Alma observes, writes about, and becomes increasingly involved with the people around her, the boundary between writer and character, observer and participant, begins to disappear.

What begins as a journey toward romance becomes something much larger.

A journey into self-discovery.

A journey through love, loss, desire, friendship, rebellion, and the search for identity.

And a journey toward understanding what it truly means to become the author of your own life.

With its vivid Missoula, Montana setting, literary voice, dark humor, unconventional characters, and portrait of a restless era, Train Music is a historical fiction and literary coming-of-age novel for readers who enjoy richly drawn characters, atmospheric settings, complicated relationships, and stories about finding yourself in an unexpected place.

For readers drawn to 1960s historical fiction, literary fiction, women's fiction, coming-of-age stories, counterculture novels, unconventional romance, and character-driven stories of self-discovery, Train Music offers a distinctly Montana journey through a changing America.