Publisher's Synopsis
Like their medieval predecessors who so memorably journeyed together to Canterbury, a motley group of railroad passengers agree to pass their time immersed in the busywork of storytelling. As the restored Paumanok Express makes its way towards Sayville and beyond, the strangers and ghosts on board create a crazy quilt of fictions, the strangest of which might be the story of the quilt-making itself. Among the tales: ---- The racketeers of the Warren Commission square off against a little boy who claims he saw what never happened on the Grassy Knoll. ---- Challenged by her hungry 52-year-old son and the emptiness of her cupboard, a snowbound widow invokes the mysterious Nostradamus Cookbook to create sustenance from nothingness. ---- The Devil's Tower, a massive wireless station in the quiet town of Sayville, is exposed as a nest of foreign agents and saboteurs. ---- Hitching his bagel wagon to the local unicorn has disastrous results for an enterprising baker. ---- A quick brown fox lives a challenging life, experiencing love and loss, deprivation and war, much like his human counterparts. Then he jumps over a lazy dog. ---- Over the course of fifteen years, a young nun's vow of silence is slowly transformed into a vow of silent vengeance. ---- A robotic bathroom attendant, a mechanized Hercule Poirot, interrogates visitors to his water closet. ---- What happens to the hole in a bagel after the bagel is eaten? Rabbi Scholnik explores this metaphysical mystery. ---- A photograph of Detroit's Michigan Avenue is stripped down, layer by layer, to reveal the underbelly of "Skid-Row" America. ---- Why is the missing passenger on the Paumanok Express missing, and what story would he have told if he wasn't? ---- An actor, attending a Halloween party, costumed as the Devil, finds himself the center of attention for a night spent with soul-bartering hagglers. Later on, he faces serious repercussions when the real Devil accuses him of identity theft.
