About Southern Passage
Synopsis
SOUTHERN PASSAGE
by
Jim Yonker
With one-hundred dollars of his parent’s money in his wallet, Buster Gaines, a newly minted high school graduate in need of college tuition money steps aboard the Texas Eagle in St. Louis and begins a summer adventure in 1966 to fulfill that purpose by working as a switchman in the Texarkana rail yards — an often thrilling but always dangerous job. Although that’s his primary goal, he embraces the chance to trade some of the innocence of his upbringing for the experiences, responsibilities, and challenges of being on his own in a strange city. He finds companionship with railroaders who accept him as one of their own. He finds companionship with two women, each so different and yet similar to him, and wrestles with conflicting emotions that come with it. Soon he discovers the thrills — drinking beer and having sex — found in being free to make his own decisions and pursues each with the gusto typical of an eighteen-year-old male.
Immersed in the racially charged setting of the mid-1960s, he doesn’t seem to understand the intractable code for social behavior operating in the South. He is soon caught up in that code and innocently finds himself at odds with it. In a spirit of goodwill and naiveté, Buster tries to befriend an older black railroad employee, but when warnings against fraternization are ignored, the authoritarian, racist stationmaster decides to punish him and arranges a transfer to the much rougher rail yards of Shreveport, Louisiana. Preceded by his reputation as a “nigger lover”, Buster finds he has been sent to a world alien to him. He is confronted immediately by the contempt of the district railroad superintendent and quickly learns he has no acceptance among the man’s underlings, the members of his new crews. Along with it, there is no mutual trust so necessary in a dangerous job. Their disdain for the young outsider soon manifests itself in acts of ostracism and defamation — and ultimately physical confrontation. Cherishing his job as a railroader while fearing for his safety and even his life, Buster struggles with the reality of being alone in that hostile world but is driven to fulfill his purpose.
Before stepping aboard the northbound Texas Eagle at summer’s end, he finishes the final few weeks of his time in the South back in Texarkana in the welcoming fold of his original crew and the companionship of the woman who had befriended him his first day there.
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Author Bio:
Jim originates from St. Louis County, Missouri and obtained his degree in Sociology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis after briefly studying at Central Missouri State College. His interest in creative writing was nurtured during high school but took off in his college years; some of his poetry, along with a one act play, appeared in a CSMC literary publication.
He retired from the world of work in 2006 after a thirty-three and a half year career. With the free time it afforded, Jim completed his first novel, Southern Passage, a coming of age/historical fiction set in the 1960s Jim Crow South. His second, titled The Kellstrumm Paradox, a work of hard science fiction/speculative fiction centering on the multiverse theme, was released on September 21, 2023.