Laurie Loewenstein

Funeral Train: A Dust Bowl Mystery Laurie Loewenstein

Loewenstein brings 1930s Oklahoma evocatively to life in her gripping follow-up to the widely acclaimed Dust Bowl Mystery, Death of a Rainmaker.

"A portrait of Depression-era America so searingly authentic that the topsoil practically blows off each page."
--Louis Bayard, author of Jackie & Me

"[T]his striking historical mystery . . . is brooding and gritty and graced with authenticity."
--NPR on Death of a Rainmaker (book one in the Dust Bowl Mystery series), One of the Best Books of 2018

Already suffering the privations of the 1930s Dust Bowl, an Oklahoma town is further devastated when a passenger train derails--flooding the hospital with the dead and maimed. Most of the dead are Black; scalded to death in a flimsy segregated car at the front of the train. Among the seriously wounded white passengers is the wife of Sheriff Temple Jennings, Etha. Overwhelmed by worry for her, the sheriff must regain his footing to investigate the derailment, which rapidly develops into a case of sabotage.

The following night, a local recluse is brutally strangled near her home along the tracks. The sheriff and his young deputy suspect her death is connected to the derailment. But as they dissect the victim's life with help from the recuperating Etha, they discover a tangle of furtive records that suggest a number of townsfolk had reason to want her dead.

Temple's investigations take place against the backdrop of the Great Depression--where bootlegging, petty extortion, courage, and bravado play out in equal measure. Where everyone is scraping by, and women carry the heavy burden of making do while keeping up appearances.