My Review of A Transcontinental Affair by Jodi Daynard

Review of A Transcontinental Affair by Jodi Daynard

I thoroughly enjoyed this historical drama about a forbidden affair that develops between two passengers on the first coast to coast across the USA train journey by Pullmann express in 1870.

People from quite different backgrounds and situations are thrown together in a small space and passions are aroused.

The book is extremely well written and the locations they travel to and through are beautifully descriptive so I felt I was there with them, travelling across the USA in this newest form of transport, seeing places one could probably only have dreamt of. It's made me long to do this same trip myself today although the charm of the book is in that it is so undiscovered and new. 

The main characters are wonderful, especially the women. and I was rooting for Louisa especially.


I have read some really fabulous books from Lake Union publishing recently and this is another really great read.

This was one of Amazon's Prime Reads offerings and I urge you to give it a try.

Here's the blurb from Goodreads

A sweeping tale of adventure and danger, innovation and corruption, and two women whose lives intertwine in unexpected ways on America’s first transcontinental train trip

May 1870. Crowds throng the Boston station, mesmerized by the mechanical wonder huffing on the rails: the Pullman Hotel Express, the first train to travel from coast to coast. Boarding the train are congressmen, railroad presidents, and even George Pullman himself. For two young women, strangers until this fateful day, it’s the beginning of a journey that will change their lives.

Sensitive Louisa dreads the trip, but with limited prospects, she’s reluctantly joined the excursion as a governess to a wealthy family. Hattie is traveling to San Francisco to meet her fiancé, yet she’s far more interested in the workings of the locomotive than she is in the man awaiting her arrival. As the celebrated train moves westward, the women move toward one another, pulled by an unexpected attraction.


But there is danger in this closeness, just as there is in the wilds of the frontier and in the lengths the railroad men will go to protect their investments. Before their journey is over, Louisa and Hattie will find themselves very far from where they intended to go.