Outbound Train by Renea Winchester

At its core, Outbound Train is about universal decisions: to stay or go; to close yourself from the world or open yourself to the unknown; to give up or persist; to dream or die.

Winchester gives voice to the mothers, daughters and sisters who struggled then, and struggle now, and gives them hope that through love and togetherness, they, too, shall overcome.

Renea Winchester believes strongly in the virtue of loving one’s hometown and giving back to the people, places, and roots that give texture to our lives and memories. Her novel, Outbound Train, is an homage to her motherland, Bryson City, North Carolina. Winchester takes us back in time and shows us fragments of small town life as seen through the eyes of Barbara Parker and Barbara’s daughter, Carole Anne — women divided by sixteen years who share DNA and the same timeless yearnings to leave home and blaze their own trails away from the familiar. Life hasn’t been easy for Barbara, who carries a dark secret from the past. She rises early with the train whistle and walks to her job at Cleveland Manufacturing where she earns a modest “polyester payday” hunched over an industrial sewing machine; she cares for her mother, Pearline, who suffers from dementia; and she believes her daughter has fallen into the grips of two dangerous troublemakers. Her young daughter, CaroleAnne, knows that folks around town have already dubbed her a “reject,” a term used to describe a person with no future beyond poverty and trailer parks. She works at a basement honky-tonk and focuses on saving enough money to repair a rusty old Oldsmobile that she will use to flee far away from the misery that is her childhood. Winchester weaves a tale that takes readers full throttle from rummaging through mounds of garbage at the local landfill, to sitting on the sofa with Pearline watching One Life to Live, to the unemployment office where Barbara leaves a foil pan of ex-lax-laced brownies for a woman who dared look down her nose at her. Her characters spring to life before our eyes with grace and grit classically emblematic of Southern women. Outbound Train was translated into French and released April 2021.