Boxcar Blues  by Jeff Egerton
Trade Paper: 6" x 9", 268 pp. ISBN: 978-1-59663-566-1 $14.95 Special Introductory Price $12.95

Friendships forged in the depth of the great depression                                       
lead to intrigue and high adventure in the skies over Mexico!

Come with Luke and Curly on a journey you won’t soon forget. This is a moving story of two teenage boys, one black and one white, who battle lawlessness and racism in the depths of the Great Depression. Heartache, lost loves and eventual success define Luke’s and Curly’s lives. Their travels in America’s darkest era earn them a tempered-steel toughness that men admire and women can’t resist. Their survival instincts and road savvy, allow them to rise far above the life of a vagrant.

A benevolent farmer hires Luke and Curly and gives them steady work. He also teaches them to fly an old Curtis Jenny. When the farmer starts an airmail route, the boys work for the fledgling airline and eventually become airmail pilots. They become life-saving bush pilots in the wilds of Alaska. When World War II breaks out they use their skills to rise to the ranks of heroic pilots, after which they form one of the nation’s leading airlines. When an old nemesis shows up, bent on revenge, they use their cunning sense of survival to outsmart him in a thrilling conclusion that takes place in the skies over Mexico.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeff Egerton was seventeen and broke when he hopped a freight train to travel west from his childhood home in Illinois. His journeys lasted less than a year, but vivid memories of those adventurous times survive to this day. Jeff then enlisted and traveled to South Vietnam, courtesy of the US Marine Corps. Following a career in aviation, he began writing international crime novels. Lodged in the back of his mind, however, was a novel about young men riding the rails across America. He began his research and discovered a time when thousands of young men traveled in boxcars out of necessity—during the Great Depression. When he read about the incredible racial inequities of the era, he knew the story had to be told. Thus, over forty years, a most engaging depression era sagas, in the spirit of the Grapes of Wrath, was born. Jeff currently resides in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife, Diane.