The Christmas Train / David Baldacci / 260 pages / Winter Holiday Themed Book

Tom Landgon is a disillusioned journalist.  He has covered wars, uprisings, pestilence,... virtually every earthly despair.  His goal had been relatively simple;  "he had wanted to change the world by calling attention to its wrongs.  And he loved adventure."  However, after chronicling all these horrific events and still seeing the conditions of humanity steadily worsen he's started writing light fluff stories for common consumption.  He is based in New York and has a girlfriend in L.A.  Leila does voice overs for Saturday morning cartoons.  After being banned from air travel in the continental U.S. for 2 years due to an incident at the airport, he decided to travel by train to L.A. for Christmas thereby fulfilling the dying wish of his father - to finish a story that, according to legend, Mark Twain had started in his later tragic years.  Tom Langdon is one of the Elmira, New York Langdons that produced Olivia Landgon, who became Mark Twain's wife.  Twain had planned to traverse American by rail to "see some good in the world."  Tom Langdon would complete Twain's plan at Christmas, a time of renewal.  "However, had he known what life-altering event would happen to him barely 2 hours after he boarded the train, he might have opted to walk to California instead."