How long must the same lie be told before events conspire to make the lie appear true? It’s like a Slow Train Coming.
Slow Train is about a girl, Penny Hill, sent to live with her maternal grandmother in Picayune, Mississippi. The story explores the power of self-worth: the ability it possesses to heal a person; the extent to which we are incapacitated without it. Along the way, it examines the string of fate that binds the young woman together with her mother, her grandmother even an estranged great-grandmother lurking behind the scenes, each in her own way looking to right some ancient wrongdoing.
Time with Gram is soon cut short leaving Penny to continue alone in her efforts to gain a foothold in Picayune. She eventually settles into the cadence of her grandmother’s former routine as a template to guide her way on unfamiliar ground, 'heels wobbling beneath unskilled legs'. She averts a full tailspin, the effects of which would land her back in the circumstance she’s worked a lifetime to escape, a failed attempt at flight that has already succeeded in derailing her mother’s ambitions. Ultimately, she finds her own worth, puts on her grandmother’s determination to step out of the path of that slow train, leaving it to carry someone else’s fate.