The Rail

by Howard Owen

Before he let his life fall apart, James “Neil” Beauchamp was special. He lived and flourished in the world of privilege, adored and accommodated. Then, before he truly learned to appreciate it, the one talent that lifted him from a small life in a small town was gone. The only thing worse than spending your life earthbound, Neil would learn, is landing hard and knowing you’ll never fly again.
 
Born in Penns Castle, in the castle itself, he was a prince of sorts. But when his mother left the castle with him in tow, he lost everything, even his name. He seemed destined for a life as a shopkeeper’s barely tolerated stepson.
 
That’s when baseball presented itself and saved him. For what Neil could do was hit. Through some combination of reflexes, vision, and coordination, the lean and supple Virginia Rail turned the game of his childhood into the driving force of his life. Before he was through, he would win batting championships and be elected to the Hall of Fame.
 
Yet before his talent failed, he already was failing those closest to him. His wife and son suffered from being outside his field of vision too much of the time. Then, with his career over well before his 40th birthday, everything collapsed. The final crash, with his half-sister Blanchard beside him in the car, the crash that sent him to prison, was seen by most who knew him as the inevitable landing at the end of a very long fall.
 
On the day he was paroled, he was met at the prison gates by his son David, the last person Neil expected to see, and returned to the castle from which he was banished as a child and to Blanchard, a woman of tenuous mental balance.
 
Neil is looking for some way to make amends. And his son, who will learn things about Neil he never would have guessed, still wants to salvage something out of their mutual wreckage.

Genres: Fiction

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

Howard Owen was born March 1, 1949, in Fayetteville, N.C. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1971, journalism) and has a master's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University (1981, English).
He and his wife since 1973, Karen Van Neste Owen (the former publisher of Van Neste Books), live in Richmond, Va. He was a newspaper reporter and editor for 44 years.
Owen won The Dashiell Hammett Prize for crime literature in the United States and Canada for Oregon Hill, his 10th novel.
His first novel, "Littlejohn," was written in 1989, when he was 40. It was bought by The Permanent Press and published in 1992. Random House bought it from The Permanent Press and reissued it as a Villard hardcover in 1993 and a Vintage Contemporary paperback in 1994. It was nominated for the Abbey Award (American Booksellers) and Discovery (Barnes & Noble) award for best new fiction. It has sold, in all, more than 50,000 copies. It has been printed in Japanese, French and Korean; it has been a Doubleday Book Club selection; audio and large-print editions have been issued, and movie option rights have been sold.
His second novel, "Fat Lightning," came out as a Permanent Press book in 1994. It was bought by HarperCollins and was reissued as a Harper Perennial paperback in 1996. It received a starred review from Publishers' Weekly.
His third novel, "Answers to Lucky," was published by HarperCollins as a hardcover in 1996 and as a paperback in 1997. It received favorable reviews in The New York Times, Southern Living, GW, Publishers' Weekly, the Atlanta Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, the Memphis Commercial Appeal and numerous other publications. It was included in "The Best Novels of the Nineties: A Reader’s Guide."
His fourth novel, "The Measured Man," was published in hardcover by HarperCollins in 1997. It was praised in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Publishers' Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, the Raleigh News & Observer, the Orlando Sentinel, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and many other publications. It was one of the LA Times Book Reviews’ "Recommended Titles" for 1997. It was included in "The Best Novels of the Nineties: A Reader’s Guide."
Owen's fifth novel, "Harry and Ruth," was published by The Permanent Press in September of 2000 to critical acclaim from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly and various weekly publications.
His sixth novel, "The Rail," was published in April of 2002. It is about (among other things) baseball and the parable of the talents. Owen won the 2002 Theresa Pollack Award for Words.
His seventh novel, "Turn Signal," was about a man whose muse drives him either to madness or to the best move he's ever made in his life. It came out in 2004 and was a Booksense selection for July of 2004.
His eighth novel, "Rock of Ages," is something of a sequel to his first novel, "Littlejohn." Georgia McCain returns to her hometown years after her father’s death to sell the family farm and finds herself immersed in baby-boomer guilt and a murder mystery. It was a Booksense pick for July of 2006.

His ninth novel, "The Reckoning," about ghosts of the ’60s, came out in late 2010 and received very positive reviews from, among others, Publishers Weekly and the New York Journal of Books.
His short story, "The Thirteenth Floor," part of "Richmond Noir," came out in early 2010.
The protagonist of “The Thirteenth Floor,” Willie Black, also is at the center of Owen’s 10th novel, “Oregon Hill,” which came in July of 2012 to very positive reviews in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and elsewhere. It's also an audio book.

Willie starred in future Owen novels: The Philadelphia Quarry (2013), Parker Field (2014), The Bottom (2015), Grace (2016) and The Devil's Triangle (2017). His 16th novel, Annie's Bones, comes out in April of 2018.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5)-As a baseball fan, I enjoyed the tale of the career of the central character. Unfortunately, I thought the first half of the book had too many players and an overcomplicated plot which distracted from what turned out to be a pretty good story. Overall, I prefer the author's more straightforward crime fiction books over this muddled family drama.

[Elizabeth]

Another book by Howard Owen (If I like one book, I often track down other books by the author). Not as good as "Littlejohn," but uses some of the same dramatic devices (death of sibling, incest)making me think the author maybe had only one good book in him and a bunch of mediocre ones after that.

[Permanent Press]

"A rich, multi-layered narrative focusing on a major-league baseball star fallen from grace, and his son and half-sister. Yet another volume in a remarkable body of work." -Richmond Times Dispatch