The Train of Lost Things by Ammi-Joan Paquette (review)

The jacket Marty’s dad gave him for his birthday four months ago became the background for a collection of pins that each reference a particular Dad and Marty moment (a trip to the circus or weekend pancakes). Now the jacket is lost—and Dad’s quickly succumbing to the cancer that has made him sick this past year. Marty is certain if he can just find the Train of Lost Things, part of a story his dad used to tell him, he can find his jacket and somehow keep Dad from dying. Marty’s pain at the imminent loss of his father is keenly felt, and Paquette deftly balances the emotional weight of his fear and grief with his fantasy journey on a train flying through the universe that holds a heap of mostly useless but sentimentally priceless items. The connection between Marty’s finding of the jacket and saving his father is a pure magical thinking and both he and the reader know it; his search for the jacket through increasingly larger piles of junk becomes a heartbreaking act of futility as his time on the train draws to an end. Readers will be relieved to see Marty move forward in dealing with his heartache, even if the path will be longer and harder than any train ride.