Train Dreams and Jesus' Son

Here are two complete audiobooks by Denis Johnson, narrated by Will Patton. Listen to both Train Dreams, and Jesus’ Son, as well as an excerpt from Denis Johnson’s National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke.

In Train Dreams Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the 20th century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this new novella by the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

Jesus's Son, also adapted for the screen, is a now-classic collection of 10 stories from the author of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and Angels. The stories are narrated by a young man, a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict, whose dependencies have led him to petty crime, cruelty, betrayal, and various kinds of loss.