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To some readers, the title of Maeve Higgins’ new book—Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them—might sound like a simple, wholesome message.
Portlanders, however, will recognize it as the last words of Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, who was killed by a hate-spewing extremist named Jeremy Christian on a rush-hour MAX train on May 26, 2017.
In Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them (Penguin Random House, 222 pages, $17), Higgins—an Irish podcaster and comedian who is also a New York Times contributor—delivers a series of essays inspired by her experiences living in the U.S.
The book tries to balance Higgins’ pessimism and optimism about the nation’s future. Something that gave her hope was the final words of Namkai-Meche, who after being fatally stabbed by Christian, said to a passenger named Rachel Macy, “Tell everyone on this train I love them.”
Christian stabbed to death Namkai-Meche, 23, and Ricky John Best, 53, after they interrupted his rant targeting two teenage girls, one who was Black and one who was wearing a hijab. Another passenger who interrupted Christian, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, was wounded. In 2020, Christian was found guilty of murder. He was subsequently sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.
In an op-ed published in The Guardian, Higgins wrote about the effect that Namkai-Meche’s words had on her. “These beautiful words stopped me in my tracks when I first heard them,” she wrote. “They gave me a directive, a way of being. At my best moments, this stranger’s last words guided where I looked, how I acted, and what I chose to do with my time.”
In the op-ed, Higgins recounts speaking to Namkai-Meche’s parents, Christopher DuPraw and Asha Deliverance.
“He really fully believed that his life could help make change happen,” Deliverance told her. “And he had enough fire behind him to really believe that. He was not a lost soul at all; he was a soul with purpose.”