Four modern families aboard a passenger train hurtle into the night.

One hundred and seventy years earlier their forebearers make their way in a young nation built on grand promises.

Each family follows their own path, only to find that their destinies are linked inextricably, the culmination of five generations of shared history.

Jonathan Evison’s Small World is a novel that speaks to the present moment, a grand adventure that explores the American experiment in its most human and intimate aspects, a novel that asks whether America has made good on those early promises.  

Humming with heart and adventure, and love and hope and ideas, Small World delivers the thrill of great storytelling straight through to its deeply satisfying conclusion.