Across America on a Emigrant Train

Across America on a Emigrant Train

by Jim Murphy

Publisher: Hougton Mufflin Company 2003 150 pages

Genre: Nonfiction and Biography

Reading Level: Ages 9-12

Summary:This book tells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson’s journey across America in a train. It is told through his own writings. He describes the horrible traveling conditions that emigrants must have dealt with as they traveled across the country. Stevenson makes the trip from Scotland to California due to that fact that the woman he loved, Fanny, was severely ill with brain fever. The entire trip took him approximately two weeks.

Response: I learned a lot of the deplorable conditions that emigrants were forced to endure in order to have a better life.