The rain pounded on the roof of the Old No. 7 train like the devil trying to get in, a warning of the dangers ahead. It had been raining for most of June saturating the landscape and overflowing the streams. Lightning lit up the night sky as the locomotive confidently pushed forward from the McDonough Station toward Atlanta. No one saw the need to inspect the tracks to see if the re-enforced trestle was intact. Then the unimaginable happened on the evening of June 23, 1900, when the trestle over Camp Creek collapsed. And the fate of forty-eight passengers and crew would be changed forever.

The catastrophe just north of McDonough was only one of the many train wrecks to claim innocent lives. "The Mystery Passenger" by Hans Broder explores multiple tragic tales in railroad history. His in-depth research follows not only the stories of the locomotives but the individuals whose lives were dramatically impacted by the turbulent events.