But in his descriptions of Gast, his wife, and employees, Lee pulls out all the stops. The bed and breakfast owner’s children, Jiff and Lottie, are quite bizarre in that one’s a male prostitute and the other is a mute nymphomaniac, but somehow they come across as real and somehow tragic. Collier reads like an everyman who happens to know a lot about beer and is effective for it. The characters are all genuine and likable enough. From the treatment of slaves and natives to attitudes of discipline and just how much power money could buy, Lee leads the reader down a path that begins subtly in the normal world and ends up in some demonic version of Civil War hell.
To provide details would also give much of the story away, but suffice to say his portrayal of the old South, and some of the attitudes in it, is horrifically brutal and, by many accounts, tragically accurate.
Lee builds a fascinating story, combining rumor, history, and pure demented fantasy in a seamless blanket of weird. The man for whom the town was named, Harwood Gast, was pure evil, and his stink is still left in his old home. He also begins to notice people acting strangely in the town and weird things in the house, not the least of which is his sudden transformation into a horny pervert with sickening dreams. When he arrives in town, he books a room at the local bed and breakfast and is taken in by all the Civil War history around the place. With an impending divorce, sagging libido, and driving a stupid-looking car, he travels to the tiny unknown town because one of his Food Network cronies tipped him off about a great beer.
Set in Tennessee, The Black Train is the story of Justin Collier, the Food Network “Prince of Beers,” who travels to the tiny town of Gast, Tennessee.
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