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A Unique And Hidden World
The Last Professional follows Lynden as he escapes his life as a computer programmer and goes in search of The Tramp, who kidnapped and abused him on the rails as a child. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
From my own experience riding the rails, I understood what a unique and hidden world this is, and that it would make the perfect setting for a story about our American culture of wanderlust and our thirst for adventure.
Lynden Hoover is an intriguing and well-developed character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
While many ride the rails to lose themselves, Lynden is returning to them to find himself. He has tried to ignore his past, and to outrun it. Now, rather than waiting for it to catch up with him he decides to confront it, knowing that he can’t get on with his life until he does.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
A freight train may seem like an unlikely place to ask the big questions — Who are we? How do we fit in? Where do we belong? — yet that is exactly what Lynden, and his mentor The Duke, the last of the professional hobos, are doing.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
My novel Four in Stone is about four unlikely high school classmates finding one another, and friendship, in the fictional northern California town of O’Farrell in the late 1960’s. It, and a short story collection, O’Farrell Stories, are complete, and I am currently at work on the sequel, Four in Love. Their availability is dependent on finding the right publishing home.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
These freights let you ride, they don’t let you go!
Lynden Hoover, a young man on the brink of a new beginning, cannot embrace it without confronting the traumas of his past. Help comes from The Duke, an old loner who calls America’ s landscape his home. He clings to an honor code, but in fleeing from Short Arm, his merciless enemy, his code is being tested. The Duke mentors Lynden, enlisting old traveling friends to keep himself and his apprentice just ahead of Short Arm’ s relentless pursuit. When two of those friends are murdered, the stakes become life or death.
Bonds are formed, secrets exposed, sacrifices made, trusts betrayed; all against a breathtaking American landscape of promise and peril. Three unforgettable characters, hurtling toward a spellbinding climax where pasts and futures collide, and lives hang in the balance.
The Last Professional
Lynden Hoover is unhappy. He’s a rising star computer programmer placed in a position where he feels he must escape. Bullied by his new boss, Lynden packs a backpack of supplies and disappears the only way he knows how– an empty boxcar on an eastbound train.
The Last Professional by Ed Davis follows Lynden as he escapes his life as a computer programmer and goes in search of The Tramp, who kidnapped and abused him on the rails as a child. Lynden meets The Duke, who shows him the ropes of riding in boxcars across the country, though The Duke has his own problems to deal with. A former friend and fellow hobo named Short Arm is after The Duke. Together, Lynden and The Duke traverse the rails to try and stay one step ahead of Short Arm.
Davis takes the reader into the gritty, unpredictable world of hobos, hiding in boxcars and spending nights in jungles, where they could get a bite to eat and maybe a shave. As the old days die away, these hobos must adjust to a world of bulls protecting train yards and fewer and fewer empty boxcars. Professionals, or Profesh, as they call themselves, are a dying breed, and The Duke and a few of his friends are the last of their kind.
Davis masterfully creates a world of train hobos, filling the book with small details without going overboard. These details bring the reader closer to the story and can leave the reader dreaming about riding the rails. With as many twists as the railroads that crisscross the nation, The Last Professional will keep you reading page after page until the very end. I would recommend this riveting novel to anyone who enjoys a good travel and survival story, history buffs, and readers who want to be whisked away to a world frequently romanticized in American pop culture.
Pages: 279 | ASIN: B09GGXLTYK
LITERARY TITAN 