Rock Island Line

by David Rhodes

“An authentically great American novel” that follows a young man’s descent into darkness after a tragic loss, and his struggle to find renewal ( Booklist , starred review). Raised in an idyllic Iowa town, young July Montgomery is rocked by the tragic death of his parents. Fleeing to Philadelphia, he fashions a ghostly existence in an underground train station. When a young woman appears to free him from his malaise, they return together to the Iowa heartland, where the novel soars to its heartrending climax. First published to enormous acclaim in 1975, Rock Island Line brings David Rhodes’s striking characterizations and unparalleled eye for the telling detail to this tale of paradise lost—and possibly regained. “Beautiful and haunting . . . I read the book when it first came out over thirty years ago and it has lived in both my heart and head ever since.” —Jonathan Carroll, author of Teaching the Dog to Read

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Novels, Literature, Adult Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

As a young man, David Rhodes worked in fields, hospitals, and factories across Iowa. After receiving an MFA in Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1971, he published three acclaimed novels: The Last Fair Deal Going Down (1972), The Easter House (1974), and Rock Island Line (1975). In 1976, a motorcycle accident left him partially paralyzed. In 2008, Rhodes returned to the literary scene with Driftless, a novel that was hailed as "the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years" (Alan Cheuse). Following the publication of Driftless, Rhodes was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010, to support the writing of Jewelweed, his newest novel. He lives with his wife, Edna, in Wisconsin.

“Rhodes proves that there is still vigorous life in the dark Gothic roots of great American novels.”

—Peter W. Jordan, The Tennessean

Reviews

[marcus miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not often a novel begins in Sharon Center, Iowa, moves to Center City, Philadelphia and back to Sharon Center, an unincorporated “town” southwest of Iowa City at the intersection of two curvy blacktop roads. The setting (I live close to Sharon Center and lived in Philadelphia) is what originally made this interesting but it wasn’t long before the characters Rhodes created drew me into their lives.

One of my favorite books when I was young was My Side of the Mountain where a boy ran away from New York City and created a life for himself in the Catskill Mountains. Rock Island Line presents a similar, though opposite scenario when after his parents are killed in a traffic accident, July runs away from his rural home to Philadelphia. July finds a place to live in a hidden “shelf” under the subway and trolley system of Center City. He sells newspapers and creates a life for himself, spending a lot of time in solitude, talking with his cat, his subconscious, and his anxieties. This may sound boring but Rhodes keeps things interesting as July ponders the meaning of life and is forced to interact with a variety of characters. Eventually July meets a young women and realizes he needs to return to Iowa after some ten years in Philadelphia. If you’ve read Driftless you know tragedy is ahead, which again provides more than enough reasons for July and the author to reflect on the meaning of, love, loss and life.

[Jay French · Rating 4 out of 5]

What starts off as a bit confusing, a bit of magic realism in a small town near Iowa City (but not to the WP Kinsella level), “Rock Island Line” explores loss, and more than that, fear. After providing family background through a few generations, the story focuses on young July Montgomery, who loses everything he’s known in a short length of time and decides, at 12 years old, to venture out on his own. The story follows July through his resettling in Philadelphia and building his own life, squatting in a subway tunnel. Though he briefly considers begging like other young street denizens, he makes a decision to work. He begins selling newspapers. The book follows July as he ages, and we see time and again how fear, sometimes a gnawing fear that he’s missing something, but sometimes a sudden fear, drives his decisions about how he will live his life. The turning point in the story is when he meets a young woman at an art gallery, and he has to decide whether to let her into his life. This relationship opens July up to his past, which he revisits through the conclusion of the novel. I found the ending not as well-done as the initial parts of the novel. July seems to have changed for the worse after his trip down memory lane, and some subplots, especially how they were written, take away from the development of the character earlier on. This book was written in the early 70s, and this seems to have informed the storyline with a kind of hippy/exploratory mentality that becomes obvious at the end. While I didn’t like the ending as much as the way we get there, I really enjoyed the book. The characters stick with you. The locations stick with you. There is timelessness to the writing, such that I found myself wondering at times in the novel if we were in the 20s or the 70s or in between. I read Rhode’s “Driftless” before reading this. “Driftless” is a kind of followup on July Montgomery’s life, and is also well written and entertaining.

I grew up in a small town about 60 miles from where the Iowa story took place. The familiarity is something else that drew me to enjoy this novel. As a bonus, readers might want to try what I did after finishing the book. Go to Google Maps and look up Sharon Center, Sharon, Iowa. You’ll see a crossroads. Click on the streetview picture to see the middle of that crossroads. As you look around the 2009 edition of this set of images, you’ll see an old, run down garage. Much of the Iowa story revolves around a garage and the house next door. I suspect this is what the author based the story on, although from the time of the writing, a few decades back.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first novel by David Rhodes that I’ve read. His writing is excellent; he has a great ear, and his writing about nature is incredible. For a good while the novel’s structure is special: it moves in an unpredictable path through a family’s story, with the third-person omniscient narrator leading the way. The first third of the novel is first-rate, but then the movement stops, and the novel becomes a bildungsroman, a good one, but not nearly as unconventional as the rest. It is both dark and sentimental, sometimes bland, sometimes frustrating, sometimes beautiful. For my taste, too much happens to rather than by. A 3.5.

Written early in my reading of this novel: Who could not love a novel with sentences like this, about six men watching two young out-of-town women (who just visited a small-town high school boy) drive away:

"Nothing conclusive could be drawn from the visit, but even to explain it coincidentally was exciting and problematic, and vicarious pleasure flowed like water long after the six men in the station had stepped out into the clear afternoon and watched until the bare heads sank side by side out of view over the hill."

[Mary Barrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more skill a writer has, the better he/she is able to manipulate an intended audience. This is a given. Creating personality, place, time, and event are all tools to manipulate readers so they can believe the action of characters and the outcome of stories.

David Rhodes is a master of manipulation. His book 'Rock Island Line' carefully pulls the reader into the sad world of his main character, July Montgomery, then moves us with a very believable story of survival and growth. His descriptions of place and time are beautiful - melodic in the telling and memorable in effect. One place contrasts with another as emotions build upon themselves. July, who is a young child in the country when we first meet him, first loses his grandmother to age, then his parents to a car accident. We know how important these people are in his life as they have been important to us. Rhodes carefully introduced each to his audience and provided full summaries of their lives. We then read with amazement when July, at age 10, runs away from his aunt who has come to take care of him, to the city of Philadelphia. He then lives beneath the subway tunnels, is befriended by a master crook, reads through his teenage years, meets an amazing young woman, then moves back to his original home in the country to settle down with her. Throughout it all we are kept in tune with July’s thoughts and we learn from them.

We learn what it means to lose everything, to be alone, to value beauty, to fear, to hunger, to trust and ultimately to love. We learn to believe July Montgomery will succeed despite having all the odds against him. And because of this belief, we also learn joy.

Unfortunately, it is exactly at this point that Rhodes’ skills of manipulation fail. He pushes the story too far.
It would be unfair for me to tell you the ending, but the unforeseen events that once again change July’s life are so contrived they take the book into a completely different genre and destroy the credibility of the very lessons that had been so masterfully taught. The events become so shocking that readers will want to throw the book across the room or give it a terrible review. But that would be too easy.

'Rock Island Line' is well worth reading. Writing that is so good that readers are drawn through a book page by page with baited breath is worth celebrating. Rhodes’ understanding the power of manipulation and having the skill to use it in his writing is praiseworthy. Overusing it, like overusing so many other powers, makes it crass and is to be condemned.

[Pandrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is the story of Driftless’s July Montgomery before he settled in southwestern Wisconsin at the end of his life. The book starts, and ends, in Iowa City, Iowa, where July was born. When July is ten years old and his parents die in a car accident, he leaves Iowa and everything he knows, making his home in Philadelphia’s Center City’s subway system. Rock Island Line is the story of a boy growing up homeless, running away from his past, and keeping voluntarily disconnected from people, and what happens, eventually, when life forces him to confront his past.

Originally published in 1975, this book’s re-release coincides with the publication of David Rhodes’ Driftless, about July Montgomery’s twilight, and his first book in over thirty years.

[KarenLee · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my best reads of 2009. Following is the summary, but it doesn't express the excellent writing or emotions engendered by this unlikely story.

Raised in an idyllic Iowa town, young July Montgomery is rocked by the tragic death of his parents. Fleeing to Philadelphia, he fashions a ghostly existence in an underground train station. When a young woman appears to free him from his malaise, they return together to the Iowa heartland, where the novel soars to its heartrending climax.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to force myself to finish this one--grim story and about a hundred pages too long.

[Mike Bahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, what I wanted to read was Driftless, Rhodes' book about the area of Wisconsin where I'm currently living (for one more day as of me writing this). For some reason I talked myself into reading this one first though. Some sort of completist thing I guess. This was a reissue, originally published in 1975, and came with a forward by Rhodes where he said the editors of the reissue talked him out of rewriting some of this that didn't exactly stand the test of time. I think even without that note I was hooked enough by this to read Driftless. There are things that could have used some editing here and that mature Rhodes knows that gives me a lot of hope that Driftless will be phenomenal. This was good, if maybe a little bloated in parts.

Like there's an extended family history to open the book that doesn't need to be there. It does come up again briefly later, but I don't think it did enough to service July's story. I think it would have worked better to just open with the parents' deaths.

Plot summary: July Montgomery's parents are killed in a car crash when he's six. His aunt comes to take care of him, but instead he flees east on the titular train line and ends up in Philadelphia. We follow July's life until he's in his early twenties and comes back to Iowa. The most compelling stuff for me was when July initially landed in Philadelphia and got set up selling newspapers and lived under the train station. Once he moves up in the world and works at the furniture store I found myself losing interest. The story was well told and truthful but I didn't really care. I cared even less once he met Mal. And less still once they were married and moved back to Iowa. Until the end, then I cared a lot again.

There's a literal dick measuring contest in the family history bit but it's kinda sweet. I wouldn't have wanted to burn this off if I were Rhodes, but I think it could have worked as a standalone short story.

I'd call Rhodes a Midwestern Richard Brautigan; earnest and absurd and good-hearted.

The death rider in the field towards the end was very compelling.

It doesn't matter how many times July traced his memories of his parents, he left at six years old, there is no way he remembers his home as vividly as portrayed here. But at least Rhodes tried to give a reason for July's impeccable memory.

I think you could say this book follows July's life through violence. But it didn't feel especially or overly violent to me.

Spoiler alert: I don't know how much I care about Mal's death. I don't know why July cared for her in the first place. She felt like a convenient story contrivance to get July back to Iowa.

I did care if July would die and the ending was incredibly suspenseful. Pretty sure I'm happy with the ending. Hard to nail that with all the built up death suspense.

[Chris Rando · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's super-curious, this novel. On the one hand you have touches of Winesburg, Ohio, a book that illustrates the real, breathing, residents of a small town, a few generations of them even.

But where Sherwood Anderson's stories feature asides about a youth ditching the insular small town and escaping to Cincinnati, Rhodes' protagonist isn't escaping anything (nor does he eschew his rural beginnings) but rather features in a darker Odyssey-like tale where a youth is cast into swirling sea of chaos, unsure about anything except what roots him and how he figures in the cosmic scheme. When the time is right, all is revealed, and he weaves the strands of his life into order. But will our young Telemachus make it home? Can he step into the same river twice?

It is steadily and even quickly paced. It reads like characters narrating stories in a Terrence Malick film like Days of Heaven. They're seemingly simple, but have deep drives and thoughts like all of us. They want to break with their parents while having what their parents had.

[Erica H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book didn't leave me with the same "oh my gosh, that was some good-ass writing" feeling as Driftless did, but clearly, David Rhodes can write his ass off. The difference between the two novels and my reactions to each of them probably has a lot to do with the fact that they were written 20+ years apart and demonstrate the writer's growth in his craft. Rhodes' strength as a writer shows up in Rock Island Line through the depth of his characters. There's nothing flat about a single one of them. For a while, I thought the book was about John Montgomery instead of July Montgomery even though I knew it wasn't. But that's how well the author makes us feel and see his characters. I'll admit there were some strange (to me) parts that I didn't understand the significance of, but nothing that really took away from the story or its direction. David Rhodes is not just an author, David Rhodes is a writer.

[Bettendorf Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was first captivated by David Rhodes when I read his later novels Driftless and Jewelweed, both set in the fictional town of Words, Wisconsin. It was in Driftless that I first encountered the character July Montgomery, and I was excited to explore this character’s origins in Rock Island Line, which follows July from unincorporated Sharon Center, Iowa, to Philadelphia and back again. The novel explores themes of tragedy, redemption, and renewal, and, like Rhodes’s later novels, is concerned with small-town rural communities that are populated with well-drawn, unique characters with rich interior lives. This was a flawed novel, one from a less mature writer, than the one I first encountered reading Driftless, however, it is filled with the same generosity of spirit that I’ve encountered in all his novels that I have read. Sadly, David Rhodes passed away last year, shortly after his final novel, Painting Beyond Walls, was published.

— David

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

I read Driftless (and Jewelweed) before reading this book. In Driftless, "July Montgomery is a farmer who plays a pivotal if understated role in the lives of the residents of Words. Though silent about his own past, July offers advice and assistance freely." He is an amazing person and I loved him as a character.

So Rock Island Line is all about his past. I truly wonder how I would have felt if I had read this book first. I was already so attached to him. And I also knew that he survived his childhood and youth. Some of the scenes, I had to put the book down and take a break before I read on, they are so fraught. Even though I knew he survived!

The reason for the .5 less than five stars is that I had a bit of a hard time with the philosophizing. But July is such an interesting character, so deep, damaged, and good.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure I've ever put a book down about 20 pages from the end because my heart was beating so hard I needed to take a break! This book has enormous power. At first, compared especially to Jewelweed, I wasn't sure I was going to get into it, but the mighty character of July Montgomery could not be denied. This book was written about three decades before Driftless & Jewelweed, and can't be rightly called a "prequel" nor are they "sequels," they are connected and July is at the center. I wish I knew what happened to him in the decades between, I'm glad David Rhodes took him up again. Rhodes was in a terrible motorcycle accident just as his writing career was taking off a couple of years after publishing this book, and he disappeared until Driftless appeared in 2008. True American masterpieces, all three. I'll have to read the earlier books at some point.

[Dan Dropps · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I don't believe that," said Wilson, "about suffering coming from hell, or from mistakes, or from anywhere. It's merely here, and we must deal with it."

"We should take more time to notice things," he continued. "We should look and be open to more --because the better feelings aren't the ones that come naturally. The have to be worked for. They come when everything else is shut out."

"Keep yourself headed forward. There's nothing easy in this world--and to give up is to lose everything. Do what you feel you have to, but do it in order to improve yourself. No running. Learn how to suffered and nothing will ever be able to hurt you. Reach as far as you possibly can, without pride. Be more than you are able."

[Cynthia Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This kept me up reading far into the night to the sad ending and the story leading up to it. The conversations, especially between all the couples, were really wonderful. The writing was beyond criticism. But the sadness and misfortune that July (ultimate character the story was about) had to deal with broke my heart. July’s grandparents and parents were exemplary people full of complications and intelligence. They were the type of people the Midwest is known for. It’s just too bad the horrible people prevailed.

[Patricia Wchman · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Rhodes is one of my favorite authors. His writing is unique and refreshing, using words and ideas which when taken literally make little sense but in the scheme of things are surprises. But just keep reading because it’s kind of like walking in a big field where all of a sudden mature poppies or buttercups appear while you randomly travel.
I’ve read both Driftless and Jewelweed and loved both of them. I was curious about July Montgomery who plays a part in both either alive or as a memory. I wish I would have read this one first.

[Baglady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prequel to Driftless, long winded in places but writing is so evocative of both rural and urban settings that it drew me in to each type of setting. Though it's hard to believe a 10 yr old could make it alone in the big city, maybe in the 50's it could have happened. Love, hate, greed, generosity, innocence and corruption all have their place in July's experiences. Would like to have the story between the two books!

[Sharon Falduto]

I don't really know what a gothic novel is, but I think this is one. It's the story of July Montgomery and his beginnings in Sharon Center, Iowa, his journey to Philadelphia alone at a young age, and the shape of his young adulthood. Kind of a journey of self-discovery kind of book, I guess. Though an overall interesting story, it would occasionally get bogged down--I didn't really need 3 pages on installing a septic tank.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Demon Copperhead and David Copperfield, another novel about a young orphan on his own. While Rhodes' book shares several plot points with those, his hero July Montgomery is one of a kind, prone to interior musings and spontaneous actions. Since I recently read Driftless I had a pretty good idea where this was going, but likely due to some family history it hit me harder than I expected.

[Deb Holden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts out slow and a bit confusing to follow. It gets better, much better. The story itself takes hold to make for an enjoyable read. I liked Driftless and Jewelweed a bit better so start your reading there. Rhodes is a very good writer and if you have not read one of his books, you are in for a treat.

[Lori Iseppi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This prequel to Driftless and Jewelweed, written 25 years earlier, is much more somber than it's successors. Where the two later books were bittersweet, this telling of July Montgomery's early life is actually quite tragic. I'm glad I read it but I enjoyed his later works more.

[Shazza Hoppsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Training wheels for the beautiful “Driftless”. Too sad a life to not impact you. Do people realy have that much bad luck? Maybe some do and so how do they go on?
Upsetting, but I like July Montgomery very much as a broken young soul.

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love his writing style, as usual, but didn't enjoy as much as his other books. Tells the rather depressing backstory of one of the main characters of his best book Driftless. Lacks the multiple points of view and intersecting storylines that I love so much about his better books.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of one young man and how he thought he had to leave home to find what he needed, but in the end it was returning to his small town roots that was his best life. Follows three generations of one family in small town Iowa.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

July Montgomery runs away from his relatives after his parents die. He lives under the subway, hustles selling newspapers, falls in with a few crooks, gets to a school and finds love--and then returns to Iowa. Great writing, good story.

[Greynomad · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading Driftless and Jewelweed this was a bit dull

[Tammy Cox · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quit. This book is awful!!!

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Struggled for the first third of this book. Just felt it was all over the place and really going nowhere. Once focus hit main character it turned into an interesting read.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like David Rhodes writing. The overwhelming theme is loneliness.

[Fr. Mark Sultani · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read that will pierce your heart and stay with you.