Summer Train East is the story of Iraq War veteran John Black attempting to find his way as a singer/songwriter in the mold of Townes Van Zandt while battling Baghdad flashbacks and love affairs with two women in a small town buried in the Westchester wilds north of New York City. A former college football player, he's been an itinerant bartender and musician since his discharge and left his most recent home in Chicago to see old friends, Luke and Sylvia, for whom he stands godfather to their son. Upon his arrival he finds the marriage disintegrating and the beautiful yet psychologically fraught Sylvia envisioning John as her physical and emotional savior. Having been subjected to a number of past sexual assaults that were only recently brought to light, she has been diagnosed with PTSD. Though John scoffs at the idea that he suffers from a similar malady, his battlefield nightmares as well as a nagging bafflement as to why he enlisted in the first place, and what he and those who died actually accomplished, continues to haunt him. A physical illness picked up abroad, one he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge, is a further reminder of the magnitude of his folly. A large part of Summer Train East is the narrative of John's experience as a FNG in a high-speed airborne infantry platoon in Baghdad during the height of the conflict. These scenes are told as flashbacks he is unable to stop reliving each night as he falls asleep. But it is not a war novel. It is a story of the return to the home front and the violence and decadence he finds endemic among former friends, as well as his reflection upon the consequences of misguided passions both at home and abroad. Following Sylvia's declaration of love, John moves in with another set of old friends (all a former tight-knit group from the bohemian Brooklyn days of their youth) and begins a relationship with the daughter of a local Tea Party Congresswoman, a woman whose politics he loathes yet personally is unable to keep from admiring. As he begins this new affair he realizes he is repressing his true feelings for Sylvia out of a skewed sense of morality and duty, something that will ultimately end disastrously for all involved.
