Boomer

"Niemann has a taut, lyrically restrained but vividly descriptive style, with an observational vigilance befitting a brakeman's mindset, and her narrative clips along like a boxcar rolling through the yard. June/July 2011"

~Bloom Magazine

"Boomer is a fascinating mix of fact, history, self-confession, self-accusation, and self-forgiveness—a diary of both emotional relationships and travel."

~Pasatiempo

"A candid, unsentimental, and un-sensationalized account of a woman's exploration into the diversity of her complex nature—sexual, intellectual, spiritual."

~Martha Banta, University of California, Los Angeles

"Ma[kes] the railroad experience come alive with all its grit, danger, romance, and general outrageousness. . . . Possibly the finest book I've ever read about the actual experience of working on the railroad."

~Kevin Keefe, Trains Magazine

"Beyond the tracks, Niemann paints incandescent American landscapes. Inside the trains, and inside the 'rails,' beds, and bars, Niemann paints innerscapes of anguish, exhaustion, and razor-edged humor from which no light escapes. No light except the author's brilliance."

~Helene Moglen, University of California, Santa Cruz

"As a bisexual, counter-cultural-type intellectual, she doesn't truly fit in any place, and she 'can't go home again'; but her marginality and her openness give her a privileged perspective from which to view the strange workings of class and sexual politics in America."

~Bella Brodski, Sarah Lawrence College