About a quarter century ago, when he was in college, Steven Christiansen had a summer job in Hillsboro. He lived in Gresham, 33 miles away.

The two cities are at opposite ends of the Portland area’s MAX Blue Line light-rail train. The trip takes about an hour and a half each way. On his daily journey, Christiansen had plenty of time to take notes.

Now in his early 50s, he’s finally pulled all those notes, with a good deal of intelligence and verve, into a young adult novel called The Blue Line Letters. 

Ty Clark, a 17-year-old high school rising senior, rides the train every weekday from Gresham to his internship in downtown Hillsboro. He doesn’t talk about the job at all, but in a series of letters to his high school English teacher, Ms. Warne (referred to at one point as Obi-Warne), he describes his daily experiences.

Each chapter is named after one of the 48 stations on the Blue Line. An extra chapter is reserved for Powell’s Books, which is definitely not on the Blue Line but is a favorite of Ty’s — and Christiansen’s. 

The result is an entrancing read, full of teenage trauma and yearning. There’s a girl — she rides the MAX to her volunteer job at the Oregon Zoo — and she shares her secret life with Ty at the end.

Meanwhile, a lot happens in this summer on the train. In no particular order: A woman gives birth, Ty poops his pants (too much Honey Bunches of Oats for breakfast), he gets to know some of the other regulars, and a scruffy “prophet” climbs on and off the train, prophesying. 

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At one point, the prophet takes on country music. Ty recounts his ramblings but doesn’t get the references at all:

“The red dirt road always leads to a ring of fire where you and I go fishing in the dark. If tomorrow never comes, I need you now, because rain is a good thing…. Country roads take me home because I’m gonna stand by your man before he cheats something fancy.”

He might not know country music, but Ty is a special kid, even a budding academic. He tosses about terms like “deus ex machina” and can spell “Bismarck.” He’s reading Jane Eyre as a school assignment and comes, grudgingly, to appreciate it. I had no idea any high school teacher ever assigned that book, but Christiansen, who taught English at Estacada High School before becoming a counselor there, says it does happen.

He says maybe 60 percent of the stories in the book really happened, including the recounting of the death of Ty’s brother by drowning at a water park. Christiansen lost a brother that way.

Christiansen originally self-published his book, but when it was featured by the Multnomah County Library Writers Project, it was picked up and published by Ooligan Press, the student-run press of Portland State University.  Christiansen, who has a degree in teaching English from PSU, is delighted. “I love that the book is about Portland and it’s a Portland press,” he said.