Carroll Devine

Sleeping Between the Rails Carroll Devine

The sign on the Calcutta train station platform warned, incredibly, "NO Sleeping Between the Rails!" But it was too late. Carroll had already done that, and would again. She couldn't help it. "Sleeping Between the Rails: A Woman's Odyssey" traces a young New Orleanian's two interwoven journeys--external and internal. Both begin with her passion to know the world and to live an uncommon life. It is 1967. Enticed by a former boyfriend's romantic promise, she sails on a freighter to meet him in Spain. Without a scheme for survival, almost no money, and led only by the prevailing winds, the couple journey in four continents for five and a half years. The odyssey is suffused with ridiculous risk and peril as they hitchhike through Europe and North Africa, and otherwise travel mostly third or abominable class. Challenged often along the way, she prompts a near riot in Iran, almost drowns, gets left in the desert, fends off sexual predators, and more. Yet, as she treks in the Himalayas, witnesses sublime beauty, living history, and the heights of the human spirit, Carroll gains strength, even as she questions all she ever thought she knew about life, humanity, and herself.