Train Whistle Guitar (Paperback, New edition)

From one of our national treasures (inducted last year into the American Academy of Arts and Letters), Train Whistle Guitar is a deceptively gentle coming-of-age novel, the first in the acclaimed trilogy that includes The Spyglass Tree and The Seven League Boots.

Set in Gasoline Point, Alabama, in the 1920s, Scooter learns everything he needs to know in Miss Lexine Metcalf's classroom and Papa Gumbo Willie McWorthy's barbershop -- and everything he's not supposed to know from ready, older girls. But, most of all, Scooter learns from the train hopping musician Luzana Cholly, who plays guitar "as if he were also an engineer telling tall tales on a train whistle". Poignant, exhilarating, and exultantly musical, Train Whistle Guitar is a masterpiece of American literature.