Excerpt from El Paso by Winston Groom, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And some not-so-finished goods: great unwashed hordes of emigrants from Europe.

Chicago in 1916 was the hub of everything that moved by rail across America.


ARTHUR SHAUGHNESSY STOOD AT THE WINDOW with a telegram in his hand. He'd already read it, and merely let it dangle by his side as he surveyed the scene below, where scores of men moved in every direction.

they came in motor trucks and mule-drawn wagons, handcarts, mancarts, and on one platform a gang of black men unloaded green bunches of bananas by hand from a freight car just in from the Gulf Coast.

Somehow, all the activity had the effect of taking him away from his troubles, which were many.

Since the window was closed, Arthur could barely hear the cacophony rising toward him, a din that screamed up day and night: the blaring of whistles, the roar of engines letting off steam, the hissing blasts from air breaks, the clanging of bells, the rumble of the locomotives, the creaking of railcars. And awash in it all was the shouting of flagmen, switchmen, oilers, brakemen, firemen, signalmen, porters, conductors, and the cursing and yelling and chanting of the freight gangs and yardmen of all stripes—many of them were on the payroll that Arthur was somehow supposed to meet by the end of the week. that dreary afternoon, clouds of gray smoke billowed into the air from scores of engines, uniting with a low bleak autumn sky that could either mean rain or the season's first snowfall. Arthur's mood matched the ominous weather. He put the telegram on his desk, sat down, and looked at it again.

WILL BE ON AJAX TO IRELAND STOP SEE IF YOU CAN HANDLE IT—FATHER

Something sagged in Arthur.

He despised that damned yacht—boat—ship—whatever-you-called-it— and the fortune it cost the company. And to Ireland, of all places, just as the whole business might go to pieces. How could the Old Man not?

John Shaughnessy, Arthur's father, had built the railroad up from a dinky two-hundred-mile passenger and freight line all the way out to Chicago and had been headed west fast as he could until construction stopped cold on the Dakota plains. And he was even going to overcome that until . . . Arthur cleared his throat and fingered the telegram, moving it around on the desk as though wiping up dust with it. the Old Man might have picked up the phone and called him so they could discuss things. But Arthur knew the reason he hadn't was precisely because he did not wish to discuss it.

SEE IF YOU CAN HANDLE IT

Arthur had been working at New England & Pacific—NE&P—ever since he was old enough to be an o$ce boy in the Boston headquarters. Summers between day school and college he worked in the rail yards or on the trains themselves, while his friends—at least those from the upper-crust Shaughnessy connections—whiled away their time in Bermuda or Newport or sailing on Nantucket Sound with girls manning the yards.

the Old Man was a stern taskmaster, especially in those days, but to Arthur he once said: "Son, someday this will all be yours, and your children's and their children's children's. the only way to learn it is from the ground up." this Arthur had done, with a sense of duty, if not always cheerfully, because if Colonel John Shaughnessy and his wife, Beatie, had not plucked him out of an orphanage in South Boston one winter morning twenty-three years earlier and taken him into their home and given him their name and the considerable benefits of their considerable wealth, he might right now be peddling apples from a cart on Boston Common or eating out of a garbage heap.

Arthur wadded the telegram and tossed it into the trash. His plan, his hope—the thing he had perceived to get the company back on stable financial footing—was to take it public and acquire an influx of stockholder cash and a sensible board of directors who could put a lid on his father's extravagances, such as the Ajax and other costly fancies that he knew were draining their assets.

Excerpted from El Paso by Winston Groom. Copyright © 2016 by Winston Groom. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.