I’m urging visitors to this site to take a look at the trailer for my new book, The Longest Road (subtitled: Overland in Search of America from Key West to the Arctic Ocean), to be published in July of this year by Henry Holt and Company. The trailer can also be viewed by visiting my author page on Amazon, as well as on my channel at YouTube. It sums up, in five minutes, what The Longest Road is about and what motivated me to write it. Laura E. Kelly produced the trailer, and I’m confident you’ll agree that she did an excellent job. I’m the narrator. The rendition of Woody Guthrie’s deathless anthem to America, “This Land is Your Land,” on the soundtrack was arranged and played by Laura’s uncle, Stephen Bachle. She told me that she remembers him from her childhood as a typical “Sixties guy” with long hair, playing “Puff the Magic Dragon” endlessly on his guitar. Laura was pleased to find out that uncle Stephen hadn’t lost his chops.
Most of the photographs in the slide show were taken by wife, Leslie Ware. The one that moves me most is the shot of the empty, two-lane blacktop shooting off through the deserts of northern Arizona. Looking at it, I feel that I’m seeing, rather than reading, Walt Whitman’s great poem, Song of the Open Road.
From The Oregon Trail, Francis Parkman’s epic saga of crossing the great plains in the mid-19th century, to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, and William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways in the 20th, the road has been the subject of many books written by the restless authors of this restless nation. I hope mine will earn a place on the shelf with the best of them. And, of course, I hope you’ll enjoy reading The Longest Road, vicariously traveling with me from subtropical Florida to the northernmost reaches of Alaska. You’ll meet the people I did, and I think you’ll come away with the same impression: that quite often, the most ordinary men and women have extraordinary stories to tell.
Visit my page on this site about The Longest Road for choices on where to pre-order the book.
Not sure if you will ever read this, but your son, Geoff and my son, Randy went to high school together in Key West. We started to come up here in the winter of ’98 and in 2003 moved up here for a variety of reason…The year we moved, there were 10 people who also moved from the Keys to various parts of Alaska…We have all had interesting stories, I am sure…It has been a fantastic journey. It is unfortunate that you didn’t know that so many keys people are here. It is, in reality, the other side of US 1. Alaska 1…..We own remote fish camps up here, practice medicine, teach, all kinds of things….We drove 7, 979 miles from the Keys. There was someone else who wrote a boat many years ago called Key West to Alaska. Wish I had known you were coming. Would have fed you some moose stew, caribou roast or some homemade caviar made by one of the best chefs in Key West, John Correa..
It sounds like a lot of you are drawn to the edges of the earth. So am I. Wish I’d known that so many Keys islanders had trekked to the far north. I would have interviewed you all, if I could find you. Thanks for getting in touch.