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A Train through Time
- Author
- Elizabeth Farnsworth
- Narrator
- Elizabeth Farnsworth
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 14 February 2017
- Run Time
- 3 hours 4 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Memoirs
What to expect
How much of our memory is constructed by imagination? And how does memory shape our lives? As a nine-year old, Elizabeth Farnsworth struggled to understand the loss of her mother. On a cross-country trip with her father, the heartsick child searches for her mother at train stations along the way. Even more, she confronts mysteries: death, time, and a mysteriously locked compartment on the train.
Weaving a child’s experiences with memories from reporting in danger zones like Cambodia and Iraq, Farnsworth explores how she came to cover mass death and disaster. While she never breaks the tone of a curious investigator, she easily moves between her nine-year-old self and the experienced journalist. Imagination is at play in her childhood adventures and in her narrative control, always with great purpose. She openly confronts the impact of her childhood on the route her life has taken. And, as she provides one beautifully crafted depiction after another, we share her journey, coming to know the acclaimed reporter as she discovers herself. Farnsworth’s curiosity lingers on every page of A Train through Time: A Life, Real and Imagined, and so does the making of a powerfully driven woman.
Critics Review
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“It has been a long time since I read a book so moving, plain spoken, and beautiful. The instant I finished it, I went back to the beginning and started in again.”
Michael Chabon, Pultizer Prize–winning author
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“A small jewel of graceful writing, insightful observing, and memorable reading.”
Jim Lehrer, journalist
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“[Farnsworth is] such an able storyteller and her tale of loss, suffused with a child’s desire to attach meaning and reasoning to death, is so universal.”
Publishers Weekly
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“Piecing together fragments of the past in this often moving memoir helps the author understand how she ‘found relief from self and sorrow by concentrating on the lives of others.’”
Kirkus Reviews
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“In this book, Elizabeth Farnsworth lays bare the genesis of the caring heart that has so infused her stellar reporting.”
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, former foreign correspondent for NPR
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“A unique, moving, and thought-provoking portrait of Elizabeth’s Farnsworth’s years as a foreign correspondent.”
Linda Spalding, author of The Purchase
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Elizabeth Farnsworth
- Narrator
- Elizabeth Farnsworth
- Duration
- 3 hours 4 minutes
- Release Date
- 14 February 2017
- ISBN
- 9781538414385
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Memoirs
Synopsis
How much of our memory is constructed by imagination? And how does memory shape our lives? As a nine-year old, Elizabeth Farnsworth struggled to understand the loss of her mother. On a cross-country trip with her father, the heartsick child searches for her mother at train stations along the way. Even more, she confronts mysteries: death, time, and a mysteriously locked compartment on the train.Weaving a child’s experiences with memories from reporting in danger zones like Cambodia and Iraq, Farnsworth explores how she came to cover mass death and disaster. While she never breaks the tone of a curious investigator, she easily moves between her nine-year-old self and the experienced journalist. Imagination is at play in her childhood adventures and in her narrative control, always with great purpose. She openly confronts the impact of her childhood on the route her life has taken. And, as she provides one beautifully crafted depiction after another, we share her journey, coming to know the acclaimed reporter as she discovers herself. Farnsworth’s curiosity lingers on every page of A Train through Time: A Life, Real and Imagined, and so does the making of a powerfully driven woman.
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