This autobiography tells the story of an indefatigable spirit who survived the Second World War, a doomed marriage, the murder of her father, rape, and the almost endless consternation of family problems. Author Dr. Nina Murray was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1913. As a child, she found herself part of the first of the Diaspora that marked the modern age. The Communist revolution stripped her family, Russian nobility, of their land, money, privilege, and title. Blessed with parents who were determined to overcome the devastating reversal of their fortunes, she found herself in England in the 1920's. There, she began the transformation from Russian Princess to professional English woman, and earned her medical degree in 1937. On her journey, Murray finds her life's love in her work, her daughter and an eight-year marriage to a Canadian admiral, and crosses the paths of other fascinating lives some very well-known, others quite outrageous. Dr. Murray's story offers a valuable lesson to immigrants in any country, at any age, and deals with the necessity of absorbing one's new surroundings while clinging to one's roots."

The book's history context is the period of the mid-1800s, when railway technology projects were viewed as making (or breaking) a community -- 'making' if the railway came to 'our' town, or hamlet, or even passed near our field -- 'breaking' if it did not, for our community would surely suffer, wither, maybe even die if passed by.The new technology was still in its infancy, with much 'learning as we go'-- and it was expected that the railway would bring prosperity to its developers, cash to its contractors, fame (and re-election) to its politicians ... and perhaps a little, or lots, of silver over the palms of those who supported the railway's establishment, rights-of-way choices, and it civil engineers.The building of the Intercolonial Railway opened the opportunity for all kinds of excitement, greasing of palms, and outright fraud involving those who paid the bills to those who did (and often didn't) do overseeing of the construction work. Once completed, the Intercolonial Railway became a vital transit corridor, carrying thousands of people and tons of merchandise, with ICR eventually becoming one of the key components of Canadian National Railways.

Anyone who has had occasion to travel on VIA Rail's oldest trans-continental train 'The Ocean' between Halifax and Montreal might wonder why the original route of the Intercolonial Railway took such a round-about course through northern New Brunswick.

The answer lies in the fear nineteenth century Canadian and British politicians had that the Americans might attempt to seize control of British North America in a winter attack. With the St. Lawrence river frozen solid, reinforcements from Britain could not reach the fortress at Quebec. Hence, the building of the defensive rail line, following 'Major Robinson's Path', a much overlooked facet of the railway's history.

Built for War: Canada's Intercolonial Railway tells the story of Canada's first attempt to assert its sovereignty, and how the railway, built with military and economic objectives in mind, served its purpose so well.iBuilt for War is Underwoodis third work of railway history and his largest to date.i o The Weekly Press, Oct. 2005 iConventional history suggests that the railway was something egiveni to the Maritime provinces as a condition of Confederation to improve the regionis economy. Instead, Underwood argues that the rasilway was a military necessity for defending central Canada from any invasion by the United States during the winter months.i o The Charlottetown Guardian, Nov. 2005

Readers will discover why railway men fear the number nine! ...why a white horse is considered an ill omen ...and why, in a profession where safety was a priority, often the supernatural was the only way to explain why accidents happened. Some of these episodes, which have now become folklore, can be explained as figments of imagination or mischief, like the supposed curse that haunts the bridges over Halifax Harbour. Others - like the 'hoodoo' on Intercolonial Railway locomotive Number 239 - cannot be explained away so easily, and readers will be left to make their own determination. Few of these stories have been told before, and never in such detail as Underwood probes the individuals involved, the events as they unfolded, and the popular superstitions of the era, to explain why such stories existed. The locomotive was to the citizens of the 1800s and early 20th Century what the computer is to people today - a symbol of the rapid and often impersonal advance of science and technology - and ghost stories may exist simply to give some substance to the belief that higher powers are at work! These "ghosties and beasties" range from the monster that shook the occupants of a boxcar on a remote siding, to the lonely mother who sought the body of her dead son on the shores of Cape Breton Island, to visits from the Devil in New Glasgow and the spectre of death on "long black trains".

James Richardson Forman was born in 1822 at Halifax, and returned from Scotland in 1854 to oversee the construction of the Nova Scotia Railway, the first publicly owned railway in the British Empire. But did he become a victim of Nova Scotia's venal politics? He had been appointed to his post at the request of Reformer Joseph Howe, but was dismissed from office in 1858 by James W. Johnston, who became Conservative premier of the province in 1857. Two years after he left for a brilliant career in Scotland, it was discovered that most of the reasons for his dismissal were the fault of his second-in-command, who was also Johnston's nephew

From Folly to Fortune examines the unfair treatment Forman received at the hands of his Nova Scotia countrymen, and asks the question if it could have been Forman, and not Sandford Fleming, who would later (in 1867 to 1876) have built Canada's Intercolonial Railway from Nova Scotia to Quebec City, had he been allowed to stay on the project.

Jay Underwood is a former Nova Scotia journalist. From Folly to Fortune is the second of his books published by Railfare*DC books, and the fourth of his works on Canadian railway history.