Starred Review ALA Booklist (Wed Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 1993)

Starred Review As he did in The Boys' War (1990) and The Long Road to Gettysburg (1992), Murphy draws on memoirs and letters to humanize history. This time his main source is the journal of the great writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who traveled in 1879 from Scotland to the woman he loved in California, first on a crowded boat and then on a series of crammed, painfully uncomfortable trains on the transcontinental railroad. Murphy weaves together Stevenson's perilous journey with a general history of the railroad--how it was planned and built, who built it, what it was like to ride it if you were rich and if you were poor, and how it changed the country and those who lived there. Murphy's style is plain: facts and feelings tell a compelling story of adventure and failure, courage and cruelty, enrichment and oppression. The handsome book's design includes lots of white space, two endpaper maps, and many prints, drawings, and black-and-white photographs, carefully captioned to make you pore over the details. The direct quotations from Stevenson show him as observer and participant. This was before he became famous, and he identifies with the emigrants' painful struggle as well as their hope. He's excited by the diversity in America (he loves the place names that express how all times, races, and languages have brought their contribution); at the same time, he's appalled at the treatment of Native Americans (I was ashamed for the thing we call civilization). Murphy provides no direct documentation (often the source is one passenger recalled, some historians have speculated), but the very long bibliography will be a starting point for those stimulated to read further. The experience of ordinary people revitalizes the myths of the West. (Reviewed Dec. 1, 1993)

Horn Book

Murphy describes the journey Robert Louis Stevenson took in 1879 from Scotland to California to see the woman he loved. The vivid account of the train trip across America with other emigrants makes extensive use of Stevenson's own words about the exhausting and often unpleasant experience. Skillfully interwoven into the narrative is a general history of the growth of the transcontinental railroad. An inviting volume, abundantly illustrated with black-and-white photographs and reproductions. Bib., ind.

Kirkus Reviews

The 19th century's transcontinental railroads, explored via a delightfully effective narrative device: tracing the 1879 journey of Robert Louis Stevenson, who, at 29, was making an as- swift-as-possible journey from Edinburgh to Monterey, California, where his beloved Fanny was desperately ill. Murphy draws extensively on Stevenson's own account of his journey, by boat and a succession of trains of varying speed and discomfort, paraphrasing the gist of his experiences and including splendid quotes revealing RLS as a sharp observer—and extraordinarily gifted reporter—with an open mind and an unusually humane attitude toward people of all sorts. Meanwhile, in well- integrated tangents, Murphy discusses related topics: the building of the railroad, including the roles of different ethnic groups; the prevalence of collisions like one that delayed RLS's train; various immigrant groups; the real nature of the ``Wild West.'' He ends with the joyful reunion (Fanny has recovered) and a summary of RLS's brief later life. A fascinating, imaginatively structured account that brings the experience vividly to life in all its detail: history at its best. Generously illustrated with period photos and prints; endpaper map; extensive bibliography, mostly of sources; index. (Nonfiction. 9+)"

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-In 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson journeyed from Scotland across the Atlantic and then by train across the United States to join the woman he loved in Monterey, California. Murphy has drawn from the writer's journal to provide a fresh, primary-source account of transcontinental train travel at that time. Choosing by necessity the cheapest passage, Stevenson traveled with other newcomers to the U.S. who had not yet reached their final destination. He describes his companions, the passing countryside, the interior of the railroad cars, and daily life aboard a train. Into these journal entries, Murphy has woven meticulously researched, absorbing accounts of the building of the railroad and its effect on the territory it crossed: the disruption and destruction of Native American life, the slaughter of the buffalo, accidents, the development of the Pullman car, the towns that quickly came and vanished as the construction crews moved on, the snowsheds built to protect the trains in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Abundant, carefully selected period photographs, engravings, and lithographs are every bit as intriguing as the text. Appended is a lengthy bibliography with some original source material. This work supplements Leonard Everett Fisher's more extensive Tracks Across America (Holiday, 1992); it is a readable and valuable contribution to literature concerning expansion into the American West.- Diane S. Marton, Arlington County Library, VA