The Layout

by J. David Robbins

When a Depression-era southern town suffers a series of inexplicable tragedies, life is interrupted for its denizens—including a womanizing mayor, the abused wife of a sullen locomotive engineer, an honest but compromised police chief, a minister that seems to levitate, a dying junk dealer, a Black preacher caught between two worlds, a brutal company guard, a diminutive railroad executive and master manipulator, and a group of church ladies prone to gossip. Seventy years later, in Southern California, these stories are interwoven into the social trials of Taylor Bedskirt, a solitary widower with an obsession for trains, who falls desperately under the spell of an aggressive and careworn waitress, earns cautious acclaim from like-minded enthusiasts, and attempts to ward off a sister intent upon giving him a “normal” life. What ensues is a trenchant and often humorous exploration of the fictions we create and how we come to believe them.

464 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2011