Cold Train Coming

In the summer of 1936, an old sheepherder emerged from the hill country of Montana seeking treatment for an ailment. Shortly thereafter he died in the little town of Fort Benton. His family requested that the old man's body be shipped East for burial. As baggage men loaded his casket onto a Great Northern passenger train, no one paid much attention to the sheep dog whining nearby. Thus began a remarkable vigil that captured the attention of people throughout the world. Over the next six years, four times a day, Shep, as the dog came to be known, faithfully met every train and checked every passenger, certain that his master would return.

Now it's 1942, and America is at war. Fears of invasion by Japanese and German armies and wartime shortages have reached even Fort Benton, where 13-year-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 and apparently out of reach. But that's not the only heartache in Ben's life. He worries also about his parents' shaky marriage and his little brother's fragile health. Ben needs a friend, and he turns to Shep, a dog that no one has ever been able to adopt—a dog that remains fiercely loyal to its previous master, who will surely be coming on the next train.

Ben and Shep's stories become one in a book reminiscent of A River Runs through it and Montana 1848. Cold Train Coming captures an earlier time in American history—a time in which a boy struggles to understand a looming and mysterious adult world. Filled with humor and emotion, Cold Train Coming is about fierce loyalty and keeping promises, 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 confusing, and the future as scary as it was exciting.

Published: September 2004
Pages: 160