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Dennis Johnson's Train Dreams

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Dennis Johnson's Train Dreams
Reading through Dennis Johnson’s Train Dreams, it quickly becomes evident that this book isn’t just a novella on the life of a man who loses his wife and daughter to a forest fire, but instead something much greater. Throughout the novel and even on its cover art, Train Dreams hints at how “…the cataclysmic changes wrought by twentieth century” led to “…the disappearance of a certain kind of American life”. In this novella, Robert Grainer is a man whose life is caught up in the middle of America’s modernization; more importantly than watching wooden bridges turn into iron bridges, Robert is able to witness the “death” of the old American West culture.
Robert is lucky enough to have been born before the modernization of America and live long

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