Stop the Train

With a cast of some 40 characters and a powerfully evoked atmosphere of place and time (the developing Oklahoma of the 1890s), this is an amazingly rich novel. Seen principally through the eyes of young Cissy Sissney and her parents, the events recorded take the form of a struggle between community and corporate interests, a conforntation which is to prove that the good-humoured resolve represented in the former will, though not without much ingenuity and resourcefulness, eventually triumph over the materialistic pragmatism of the latter. McCaughrean's control of her material and her evident joy in the multiple manifestations of humanity and its ways are a delight. Best of all is the portrait of Miss Loucien, one of the most engaging - and unorthodox - of fictional schoolteachers: the book's final page, reproducing her handwritten farewell to her pupils, is a touchingly apposite conclusion to a totally engrossing narrative.