Angol
Montana, 1958. The dust is still settling. A train is going away down the valley. A section hand sits on the gravel embankment, his hands shaking. A few feet from him, a young woman sits looking at the place where the train was. She does not seem to be breathing hard.
He does not ask the question he reaches for. She thanks him and walks the six miles to Crandall.
That is where Good Ground begins.
What follows is a year in a valley that is losing its railroad. Martin Voss maintains the branch line through its last season - tamping ballast, clearing drainage, keeping the track right for trains that will stop running in June. Ruth Alder takes a job at the grain elevator, a room at Mrs. Pell's boarding house, a stool at Roy's diner. Neither speaks of the embankment. Neither leaves.
Good Ground is a novel about two people learning to stay somewhere. It moves at the pace of the work and the season - the freeze, the thaw, the long flat winter light on the valley floor. It does not explain itself. Neither do its characters.
