The Sunshine Special

Book excerpt: Alleen DeGaris, a native of Missouri who lived most of her adult life in Mexico, travels for three days on the Sunshine Special, a train operated in the early years of the twentieth century by the Missouri Pacific Lines. While the train progresses through the different cities of northern México and the southern United States, it travels into a liminal space where that which was is no longer but what is to come has not yet arrived. As this remarkable woman weaves her story of grief and hope, faith and family, it becomes clear that she, too, like the name of the train on which she rides, is the Sunshine Special.