The Journey Home

by Zelda Popkin

From his fellow passengers on the Palm Queen, crack train between Miami and New York, Lieutenant Don Corbett, DFC, on leave from the European theatre, puts together for himself a picture of America's home front. Here is a man too honest to see these people as they see themselves -- the predatory women, the idle reactionary rich, the crooks, politicians, gamblers, the professional men, the migratory wives and children of servicemen, and the ordinary well-meaning citizens.

On his twenty-four-hour journey in this microcosmic America, he also meets Nina Gilmore, stylist for a fashionable Fifth Avenue shop. She tries hard to see things Corbett's way, but it takes a train wreck to bridge the gap between soldier and civilian.

Genres: Fiction

218 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Zelda Popkin (1898–1983, née Feinberg) was an American author of novels and mystery stories. She created Mary Carner, one of the first professional female private detectives in fiction. Carner was a store detective who appeared in five novels. Connections have been made with Angela Lansbury’s character in the television series Murder, She Wrote — Jessica Fletcher.

Popkin's most successful book was The Journey Home, published in 1945, which sold nearly a million copies. Small Victory, published in 1947, was one of the first American novels with a Holocaust theme, and Quiet Street (1951) was the first American novel about the creation of the state of Israel. She also wrote an autobiography, Open Every Door (1956), chronicling her childhood, life with Louis, and life after his death. Herman Had Two Daughters (1968), a novel about two young Jewish women growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, is also largely autobiographical.
Zelda Popkin was married to Louis Popkin, and together they ran a small public relations firm until his death. They had two children, Roy and Richard.

Reviews

[Michael David · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Nothing's for free. You pay for perfection. If you'd had less, you'd have had less to mourn." (p. 141)

Honestly, it's been a while since I've read a novel. I've read non-fiction for the most part of this year: the novel I read prior to this one was Pedro Paramo, and that was more than a month ago. I was nevertheless intrigued by the book's cover, and figured I had little to lose reading a little-known author.

Funnily enough, this was Popkin's most popular work. It dealt with strangers on a train interacting with one another, and growing throughout the journey. Most of the novel is told from the eyes of a bombardier, Don Corbett, who, to my understanding, has a furlough. It features his passive-aggressive, psychologically unstable stance to an arcane war, and his interactions with the women as equally broken as him.

I think it would have been a better novel had it solely focused on the few main characters, similar to Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Due its diffuse nature, however, it suffered in exposition. I didn't care about most of its characters, although the novel did pick up when the train wreck occurred, and the real selves of the main characters evinced themselves. While the novel ended on a positive, hopeful note, I believe it would have been much better had it been one hundred pages less. There was too much dialogue among the characters with little plot progression, and I abhor waste in my fiction.

At least the cover looked cool.

[Adam Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

How does a book that was only published once in 1945 only cost $5 for a first edition 80 years later?
The great part of this book was the setting. A passenger train in 1945, the war still going on. The late addition of the accident and you've got a story. Well so you would think.
The book is very dated. Women get hysterical and need to be smacked across the face. When did that stop?
The main character is not very likable, the writing not very coherent. The story kind of goes nowhere.
I would say it's worth it for the setting, but just barely.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I inherited this book from my grandmother years ago and I recently, and spontaneously, grabbed it off my shelf and finally started reading it. It's a hardback from 1945 and on the copyright page is this notice: "Under Government regulations for saving paper during the war, the thickness of this book has been reduced below the customary peacetime standards. Only the format has been affected. The text is complete and unabridged." Useless factoid, but I found it interesting given that the story itself is set during wartime and involves people affected by WWII.

As for the book, this little gem of a story was a delight to read. The author brings the characters together on a train, they get to know one another and we get to know them. How their lives intertwine throughout the journey and afterward is brought to life though thoughtful depiction of the setting and its details, accurate dialogue and descriptions of the characters, and the Zeitgeist in general brings you into wartime mentality in the USA. There's a certain film noir-ness about the whole thing, and you could imagine Bogart and Becall in the main roles. The story meanders along until near the end when (the spoiler was already in the description of the novel here on Goodreads) tragedy strikes. In any case, I found myself drawn into the drama which is something precious for me, and most appreciated. I'm glad this book found its way into my hands. It deserves to be read.