FDR's Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance »

Robert Klara is an editor and writer. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, American Heritage, New Jersey Monthly, and The Christian Science Monitor. Klara has been a staff editor for numerous magazines, including Town & Country and Architecture, and has also worked as a researcher for legendary author Gay Talese. He lives in New York City.

In April 1945, the funeral train carrying the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt embarked on a three-day, thousand-mile odyssey through nine states before reaching the president's home where he was buried. Many who would recall the journey later would agree it was a foolhardy idea to start with--putting every important elected figure in Washington on a single train during the biggest war in history. For the American people, of course, the funeral train was just that--the train bearing the body of deceased FDR. It passed with darkened windows; few gave thought to what might be happening aboard. A closer look inside the train, however, would reveal a Soviet spy about to leak a state secret, a newly widowed Eleanor Roosevelt, who just found out that her husband’s mistress was in the room when he died, and the entire family of incoming president Harry S Truman. The thrilling story of what took place behind the Pullman shades, where women whispered and men tossed back highballs, has never been told. On the occasion of the sixty-fifth anniversary of FDR's death, Klara chronicles the action-packed threeiday train ride during which, among other things, Truman hammered out the policies that would galvanize a country in mourning and win the Second World War.

AMERICA IN WWII magazine

"FDR put steel in the spine of a nation stunned and bewildered by the disaster of Pearl Harbor, promising, "We shall gain the inevitable triumph-so help us God." The depth of feeling his death aroused and the sorrow that surrounded the train bearing his body to the capital and finally to the banks of the Hudson River is recalled and captured by Klara.This slim volume recreates vividly a sense of what America was like in 1945 and puts us aboard the melancholy train."--(Brian John Murphy, Fairfield, Connecticut)

Prologue
• Chapter 1: Pine Mountain
• Chapter 2: The Mainline
• Chapter 3: The West Hall
• Chapter 4: Twelve Long Hours
• Chapter 5: The Train of Secrets
• Chapter 6: Car No. 3
• Chapter 7: Where the Sundial Stands
• Chapter 8: Homeward
• Chapter 9: “We do not fear the future”
• Chapter 10: Aftermath