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THE JOURNAL OF SEAN SULLIVAN: A Transcontinental
Railroad Worker
by William Durbin
Scholastic
ISBN: 0439049946
Ages 8-10
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At the conclusion of A LIGHT IN THE STORM:
THE CIVIL WAR DIARY OF AMELIA MARTIN, one of the characters goes to
work on the Transcontinental Railroad. This action-packed account
tells how men built that first railroad from Nebraska to California
in the years after the War Between the States. Narrator Sean Sullivan,
an Irish-American teenager who lays tracks and pounds railroad spikes
with his widowed father, feels like he's "playing a direct part in
tying this country together."
This fictional diary covers two years, from 1867 to 1869. Sean witnesses
a truly wild West, where buffalo herds still roam, outlaws populate
makeshift towns, and angry Native Americans attack white intruders.
He gets accustomed to rowdiness among his short-tempered coworkers
and risks injury from the heavy hammers and explosive nitroglycerin
used in construction. When he's not hard at work, he writes letters
to his younger brother John or reads popular fiction by Jules Verne
and Mark Twain.
William Durbin (author of THE BROKEN BLADE) imagines Sean as a brave
and down-to-earth kid, not unlike Gary Paulsen's wilderness heroes,
and he sets the scene with prints and photos of real railroad work
crews of the 1860s. In a historical afterward, Durbin takes a white
settler's point of view, writing, "At its best, this new railroad
proved the theory of Manifest Destiny --- the concept that it was
our God-given right to claim the land west of the Mississippi ---
but at its worst, it represented unbridled greed." Readers might not
agree that Manifest Destiny was ever "proved," and they should question
the "our" in that sentence, which doesn't account for the Transcontinental
Railroad's mistreated Chinese laborers or to the Indian tribes displaced
by whites.
Durbin also reveals the hazards of pioneer life, as when Sean comes
upon the grave of a young girl along the rough Oregon Trail. (Readers
wanting more information on the terrors of pre-railroad America should
look at Marian Calabro's gripping history tale, THE PERILOUS JOURNEY
OF THE DONNER PARTY.) The Transcontinental Railroad enabled easier,
faster travel across deserts and mountains, and this fact-based story
explores how men put that railroad together by hand.
--- Reviewed by Nathalie op de Beeck
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