The unnamed narrator—let’s call him “Locke”—is a discharged veteran or ex-felon in a rust-belt city (Youngstown, OH, or Gary, IN). Broke and dissociated, he wanders into a rail yard. There, he encounters The Train Gang: a mobile, anarchic collective of roughly a dozen individuals who live exclusively on slow-moving freight trains. Their leader is a woman known only as “America”—a scarred, brilliant, predatory figure.
Volume 1 likely follows the gang as they ride from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, hopping grainers, boxcars, and coal drags. Along the way, they engage in what they call “groping towns”—brief, violent incursions into small-town America: stealing from big-box stores, sabotaging rail signals, and leaving cryptic graffiti that reads “RA LOCKE WAS HERE.” Groping America V. 1 Riding With The Train Gang Ra Locke
As the train rumbled on into the night, Ra realized that he was in this now, for better or worse. He was a part of the Train Gang, and he'd ride with them until the wheels fell off. Their leader is a woman known only as
I was unable to find a record of a book or media titled Groping America V. 1 Riding With The Train Gang by Ra Locke in any major library catalogs, literary databases, or news archives. He was a part of the Train Gang,