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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Pelican Road by Howard Bahr ISBN 13: 9781596922891. From the acclaimed author of The Judas Field , a beautiful and haunting portrait of the men who served on the great American railroads. It’s Christmas Eve, 1940. Along an isolated stretch of railway between Meridian, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana, two locomotives travel toward one another through the dark winter landscape. A.P. Dunn, engineer aboard the 4512 southbound freight, reminisces about the last trip he made through the snow. And though he can remember every detail about that voyage in 1923, what he can’t recall are the events of a few hours ago — where he ate breakfast, how he got the gash on his forehead, or what he did to make his crew treat him so strangely. On the northbound Silver Star, a luxury passenger train packed with returning college students and gift-bearing families, brakeman Artemus Kane has his own memories to contend with: French trenches and German snipers, a failed marriage, and a too-short layover spent with Anna, the brilliant and lonely woman he has just left behind in the Crescent City. In Pelican Road , Howard Bahr returns to his greatest theme — the tragic nobility of those attempting to overcome difficult situations through love, honor, and sacrifice — and shows that on the railway, catastrophe is never more than a distracted moment away. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Howard Bahr was born in Meridian, Mississippi. During the Vietnam War, he was a gunner’s mate in the U.S. Navy and later worked as a brakeman and yard clerk on five railroads in the South and Midwest. He earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Mississippi and was on staff at Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner, serving as curator from 1982 to 1993. The author of three previous novels — The Black Flower , The Year of Jubilo , and The Judas Field — he currently resides in Jackson, Mississippi, and teaches at Belhaven College. From Booklist : After penning a highly praised trio of Civil War novels—The Black Flower (1997), The Year of Jubilo (2000), and The Judas Field (2006)—Bahr turns to the 1940s and a close-knit group of railroad men. Bahr, a former railroad man himself, is intimately familiar with that world (“an alien, masculine world with a language all its own”) and here deploys many lovingly detailed passages describing the mechanics and machinery. A. P. Dunn, engineer on a freight train, has been suffering from memory loss, but his crew is reluctant to confront him because of his loyal service and his generous mentoring of the younger men; meanwhile, Artemus Kane, a conductor on a deluxe passenger train who is also a World War I vet haunted by his battle experiences, wonders if he has finally met a woman he can commit to. Due to a series of miscommunications, the two trains seem to be on a collision course in spite of the crews’ long years of experience and dedication to their work. Running right underneath the suspenseful narrative is a beautifully wrought view of the world as a lonely and unforgiving place. --Joanne Wilkinson. Howard Bahr. Howard Bahr, originally Howard Hereford, was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1946. His present last name, Bahr, came from his stepfather, now deceased. As a child, Bahr realized his natural proclivity for writing and his love of reading. Listening to the tales of his grandfather, he realized an interest in the Civil War and the old South. His favorite authors include William Faulkner, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. When he was ten years old, Bahr and his family moved to Texas and subsequently moved to many other places across the United States throughout his childhood. After his high school graduation in 1964, Bahr entered the United States Navy, where he served four years. After being released from the Navy in 1968, Bahr worked on the Gulf Coast Railroad for five years. In 1973, Howard Bahr entered the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a twenty- seven year old freshman. There he received both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English. He completed the coursework and examinations for a doctoral degree, but withdrew before completing a dissertation. During his time at Oxford, he worked as a curator at Rowan Oak, the William Faulkner Homestead and Museum, from 1976 to 1993. Also, he became an instructor of literature at the college and a re-enactor of the Civil War. The Black Flower. In August of 1993, Bahr set out for a change. Because his job at Rowan Oak and Ole Miss seemed to be a dead end, he accepted a job at Motlow State Community College in Tullahoma, Tennessee, teaching English as an assistant professor. It was after he moved to Tennessee that he published his first novel, The Black Flower, in 1998. It is a beautifully written novel about an ordinary soldier in the Civil War, which was nominated for The Stephen Crane Award, and won The Lincoln Prize from Gettysburg College and The LSU Michael Shaara Award for Civi War First Fiction. It was also nominated for the the Sue Kaufman First Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition, the novel was chosen as both a Book-of-the-Month Club and a Quality Paperback Book alternate. Bahr’s second book, The Year of the Jubilo, published in 2000, is also a novel about the Civil War. Many critics have commented on its depiction of sorrow, anarchy, and defeat, but others find in it a note of hope. Robert Morgan comments that the “affection for the greening countryside and town of Cumberland, the loving detail of forest and river, soil and graveyard, are the true moral and poetry of this war story, showing that the life of a place transcends any one ruin or atrocity.” Howard Bahr, Photo by N. Jacobs. While in Starkville in the spring of 2007 for Starkville Reads , Bahr stated that The Year of Jubilo will be his last Civil War novel for awhile. He is working on a story set in 1940 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi.. In 2006 Howard Bahr’s third novel The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War was published to high acclaim. His most recent book, Pelican Road, was published May 8, 2008. It is the story of men who worked on the great American railroads. Bahr himself, after serving in the US Navy in Vietnam and the Western Pacific, worked as a brakeman and yard clerk on several railroads in the South and Midwest. Bahr’s prose has been praised by many. April Austin says in her review in the Christian Science Monitor in 2000 that Bahr is “A writer of uncommonly beautiful phrases and compelling characters: he has twice managed to convey truths about the human condition within the confines of the American Civil War. First, in his debut novel The Black Flower (1997) and now again with The Year of Jubilo , which tells of a soldier returning home at war’s end.” Howard Bahr is the winner of the 2007 Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction for his book The Judas Field. The award was presented at Gettysburg College in November, 2007. His novel The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War received the W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction in 1998, and in 2011 Bahr was the winner of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Literary Arts. Currently Howard Bahr lives in Jackson, Mississippi, and teaches English creative writing classes at Belhaven College. Howard Bahr enjoys writing because of the way he can reach out to people and share with them his feelings. He remains unmarried and has no children. Reviews. A Review of The Black Flower. by Becky Utz (SHS) The Black Flower by Howard Bahr is a beautifully-crafted tale of a soldier and his comrades dealing with the everyday aspects of battle and war. It is set around the Battle of Franklin during the Civil War in Franklin, Tennessee. Bushrod Carter, the main character, is from Cumberland, Mississippi. This is a humbling story of courage, and human nature. Kathy Jacobs, Noel Polk, Nancy Jacobs, writer Howard Bahr, and Paul Jacobs in 2008. The Black Flower vividly describes the everyday life of the soldiers and how they keep their sanity. They have none of the passion for war that we would expect. The Union army in this book is referred to as “the strangers,” an unknown predator with no real motive. Bushrod often wonders which soldier will be the one to end his life. He wonders if he met that soldier would it make any difference, would the stranger still kill him? After a day of battle, however, the soldiers of both armies are forced to work together to bury their dead. Bushrod and his friends are surprised to find how normal and human the Union soldiers are. In this book, the black flower is symbolic for death. Bushrod Carter is constantly confronted with his own mortality in dreams and fantasies, but he isn’t afraid of it so much as he is intrigued by it. His dreams are most often of his dead friends; but they don’t frighten him, they seem almost pleasant and welcoming. Bushrod Carter is a sweet boy with no desire to kill anyone nor any interest in promotion of his rank. After a devastating battle, he meets a nurse named Anna, who is doing her best to remain strong for the wounded soldiers.

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