Some reviews you feel like shouting about.

Locomotive doesn’t come out until September, but the first review is out today, and I’m happy to say that I couldn’t ask for a better start for the book. The review is a starred notice from Kirkus Reviews: “Floca took readers to the moon with the Apollo 11 mission in Moonshot (2009); now he takes them across the country on an equally historic journey of 100 years earlier. In a collegial direct address, he invites readers to join a family—mother, daughter and son—on one of the first passenger trips from Omaha to Sacramento after the meeting of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific in May 1869… Full- and double-page spreads take advantage of the book’s unusually large trim for breathtaking long shots of the American landscape and thrilling perspectives of the muscular engine itself. The nameless girl and boy provide touchstones for readers throughout, dubiously eyeing an unidentifiable dinner, juddering across a trestle, staring out with wide-eyed wonder. Unjustly undersung as a writer, Floca soars with his free-verse narrative…. Nothing short of spectacular, just like the journey it describes.” 

The review is up in its entirely on Kirkus for subscribers, here, and also on Amazon, here. Thank you, Kirkus Reviews!

Above: a newspaper “butch” hawks his wares. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.