The Night Train

Jayrod Nash is not your typical fourth grade boy. The abuse he suffers at the hands of his father is brutal, and he doesn't find much comfort in his mother. At school, his shyness makes him a prime target for the class bully, but Jayrod is getting tired of being everybody's punching bag.Arnold Wise is Jayrod's best friend, and he's starting to realize that something in the Nash household is terribly wrong.Twice a day, a train rumbles through the woods behind Jayrod's rural Mississippi home. The day train fills his head with dreams of adventure, but at night his thoughts turn to escape. Escape from a life of pain and neglect. With Arnold's help, he stops the train and sneaks aboard, and soon learns that problems can't be solved by running away.

Carl Purdon lives in Pontotoc, Mississippi with his wife and two of their four children. Born in 1964, he knew by age five he would write novels someday. He prepared himself by reading a wide variety of books, and by falling down a few times. His passion is observing people. His goal is to create characters so real his readers will feel they know them by the end of the book. In February of 2012, he released his debut novel, The Night Train, then followed it up with his second novel, Norton Road in 2013. In 2014, he released Blinders. His fourth novel, Red Eyes, a sequel to The Night Train, was released in 2015. Norton Road was selected as a Notable Indie by Shelf Unbound magazine as part of their 2014 Best Indie Book Awards. Carl writes in the contemporary fiction genre, with emphasis on true-to-life drama and suspense. During an introduction at a reading roundtable in 2014, Carl’s writing style was described as a mixture of Mark Twain and Merle Haggard, a compliment he continuously strives to live up to.