Railroad Ties - by Luana Lundquist-Rowland (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Railroad Ties; Broken Hearts and Mended Lives is the embellished true life story of a brother and sister growing up in America sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. The narrative opens in San Francisco shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We join Luana and Jimmy as they embark, hand in hand, guided by destiny and challenged by fate, on their shared journey through this life, where situations take them and the times demand they go. The author, Luana Lundquist-Rowland is a Jungian trained and California licensed marriage and family therapist. Her medium is Sandplay Therapy. Her specialty is children. In her thirty years of practice she has written hundreds of case histories. Now at long last she crafts her brothers and her own. As Luana sits at her desk across from an ebony framed photograph of her brother and herself as adorable children she takes pen in hand and begins writing Jimmy's obituary. What starts as a reverie of their often bewildering early life experiences, becomes a tender tale of strength and weakness, betrayal and forgiveness, broken hearts and mended lives. What emerges is Luana's growing understanding for and then acceptance of Jimmy's untimely death as a result of his life-long addiction to alcohol, as an inevitability. The narrative begins as the young children are escorted to the Southern Pacific Train Station in Oakland, California. They are upon arrival deposited in the capable hands of kind eyed porters. This sixteen hour journey sets the stage for the bond of love that binds these two for a lifetime.