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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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A TRAIN THROUGH TIME

Elizabeth Farnsworth

A Life, Real and Imagined

A memoir of self-discovery by an impeccable broadcast journalist and award-winning foreign correspondent, where memory and imagination are closely linked, mixing fact and fiction in an unusual way.
How much of our memory is constructed by our imagination? And how does that memory shape our paths, beliefs, and desires? As a nine-year old, Elizabeth Farnsworth struggled to accept the terrifying loss of her mother to cancer. The loss led to an unusual cross- country journey for Farnsworth and her father. En route to San Francisco from her home town of Topeka, Kansas, the heartsick child searches for her mother at train stations along the way. Even more, she searches for answers—answers to her mother’s death, the speed of time, and to a mysteriously locked compartment on the train.

Weaving a child’s imaginative adventures with vivid memories from her reporting in danger zones like Cambodia and Iraq, Farnsworth explores how she became involved in covering mass death and disaster. While she never breaks the tone of a curious investigator, she easily moves between her nine-year-old self and the experienced, hard-hitting journalist. Imagination is at play throughout her work, whether it be in her childhood adventures or in her narrative control, always with great purpose. She openly confronts the impact of her childhood on the route her life has taken. And, as she provides one beautifully crafted depiction after another, we share her journey, coming to know the acclaimed reporter as she discovers herself. Farnsworth’s curiosity lingers on every page of A Train Through Time: A Life Real and Imagined, and so does the making of a powerfully driven woman.

Elizabeth Farnsworth is a filmmaker, foreign correspondent, and former chief correspondent and principal substitute anchor of PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Her 2008 documentary, The Judge and the General, co-directed with Patricio Lanfranco, aired on television around the world, winning many awards. She has reported from Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Haiti, Iraq, and Iran, among other places. She has received four Emmy nominations and is a recipient of the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award, which is often considered the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
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Book

Published 2017-02-01 by Counterpoint

Book

Published 2017-02-01 by Counterpoint

Comments

Filmmaker and PBS foreign correspondent Farnsworth packs a life’s worth of pain and self-discovery into a slim memoir that fuses fiction and memory . . . [S]he’s such an able storyteller and her tale of loss, suffused with a child’s desire to attach meaning and reasoning to death, is so universal. Read more...

Elizabeth Farnsworth has created a magic potion of prose that has both the deep rhythms and cadences of poetry. Her A Train through Time sparkles with the telling of happenings from the real and the imagined. It is a small jewel of graceful writing, insightful observing and memorable reading that will live in the mind of readers forever.

A unique, moving, and thought-provoking portrait of Elizabeth's Farnsworth's years as a foreign correspondent, beautifully layered with a potent reimagining of the loss she suffered in childhood, one part of her life speaking to the other, answering and assuaging, bringing a long-sought understanding of the pull war zones and conflicts exerted on her.

In this haunting combination of a reporter’s memories and the imagination of a bereaved child, Elizabeth Farnsworth seamlessly weaves together two different, but not entirely disparate, aspects of her life. The result is a deeply moving piece of literature quite unlike any other I have read.

I beganthis bookwith a sense of discovery and finished it in a state of exaltation. Along the way it broke my heart. It has been a long time since I read a book so moving, plain spoken and beautiful.

From Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq,and otheroutposts of human danger and devastation, famedNewsHourtelevision journalist, Elizabeth Farnsworth brought hometragic news. Yet, as a nine-year-old girl, young Elizabeth faced a tragic loss of her own.In this riveting book, we meet a brave, questing child, teddy bear under arm, facing the edge of the unbearable, anda highly compassionate adult,seeking to know and help a wounded world.Brilliant. Unforgettable. Healing.

Interview: Elizabeth Farnsworth Revisits Conflict Zones, Loss in ‘A Train Through Time’ Read more...

In her intensely personal book, journalist and filmmaker Elizabeth Farnsworth…combines historical and emotional fact with a bit of fiction to paint a portrait that captures her childhood and also her professional life. Read more...

A glimpse of a life both real and imagined, beautifully told. It's a story of courage and compassion, longing and love. A polished gem, like nothing I've ever read before.

In this book, Elizabeth Farnsworth lays bare the genesis of the caring heart that has so infused her stellar reporting. In flash backs and leaps forward, in fact and fantasy, she takes the reader on a journey that opens up her personal and professional world in a way that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. It is a unique perspective that deserves to be read by anyone who cares about the news and is curious about someone who does it so well.

impressionistic... often moving memoir. Read more...