It’s 2019, and Walter Bergen is making his final trip as senior operator of the Amtrak Coast Starlight. Far from looking forward to retirement, he’s more concerned about the “surprise” party his wife is planning than the slowly building snowfall. He is proud of his career and feels more confident on the train than navigating his relationship with his gay daughter and her future wife. He’s proud that generations of his family have been involved with the railroad, all the way back to Finnegan Bergen, who laid tracks to complete the rail line that linked east coast to west.

Flashback to the 1850s. Subsequent chapters follow four very different families and their part in the building of this restless, fruitful young nation. The Bergens come from Ireland destitute and fatherless, soon leaving twins Nora and Finn with only each other to count on, until they can’t even do that. In San Francisco, immigrant Wu Chen confides the story of his ill-gotten gold and the grisly way he came by it to the ghost of the uncle he left behind in Guangdong.

"Jonathan Evison displays a great talent for bringing a character to life with only a few words.... [E]ven at 466 pages, I didn’t want to see the end of this SMALL WORLD."

Meanwhile, the slave Othello plots to make a break from his master on a business trip to Chicago and does so, renaming himself George Flowers. In California, teenage Luyu (Miwok for “Wild Dove”) runs away from her kind but strict adoptive family, after escaping a massacre as a 10-year-old. She meets up with another Indian, John Tully, and they make their way to a place in the woods they can call home together.

Descendants of all these people end up on the Coast Starlight that fateful night in 2019, and we meet them. Malik Flowers’ mother has scraped together enough money to take them to Seattle to showcase Malik’s extraordinary basketball talent. Laila Tully is escaping an abusive relationship. Jenny Chen and her family are taking the train to Seattle for a weekend getaway. And Walter Bergen is in the driver’s seat. Small world indeed!

The train trip is a splendid device to link them, and as the snow gathers and the train steams north, each flashback chapter further endears the characters to our hearts. Don’t worry, the chapters are headed by the year and the character’s name, so it’s easy to keep track of them all. Jonathan Evison displays a great talent for bringing a character to life with only a few words. For example, here’s Walter’s wife, Annie, speaking about Walter and their daughter, Wendy: “‘You both have the damn Irish temper,’ said Annie, a Lutheran from Wisconsin, a patient soul, a good listener, and a driver who invariably acquiesced at four-way stops.” Never mind the people; the settings themselves seduce the reader. From the frenzy of the California gold rush to the grand Chicago homes of the railroad investors, the places in this book come to life.

The risk in introducing so many intriguing stories is that some are necessarily left hanging. Yet on the train, present-day lives change for better and worse; in the past, Nora finally finds her brother. Such is a testament to Evison’s storytelling that even at 466 pages, I didn’t want to see the end of this SMALL WORLD.