Cycling Through Columbine

I believe this is an important and powerful book. The opening moments are terrific...The book is by turns powerful, funny, poignant, harrowing, and heartfelt. We meet a narrator who is processing through movement, community, and, upon one of the biggest and most dramatic "ruptures" of his adult life; one that shifted not only his identity, but the identity of the community, and the country, as well. This is a fantastic premise for a book...one written in a propulsive, tightly controlled narrative.

I am deeply moved by the connection JRW Case felt with one particular victim and his lacking a sense of belonging….For the storyteller, of course, the perspective is unique because he was in direct contact with the events and personally invested. But the book tells an American story--of war, expansion, guns, "freedom," and people building new lives from the ashes of old ones. We are ALL invited by the strength of the narrative to reckon with this. The aftermath of Columbine is the aftermath for ALL of us. -Emily Rapp Black, author of Poster Child: A Memoir

JRW (Robert) Case is a Buckeye by birth who now lives in Denver, Colorado, with his wife and partner, Marceil. When his bicycling journey across the USA began during the summer of 2017, the author did not yet realize all that he would be treating.

This travelogue adventure includes a quest for values and the tragic massacre of Columbine in 1999 with its profound and pervasive implications. Robert worked then as a child protection attorney with a personal connection with one of the Columbine victims and deep ties to a community. He and his family lived nearby, and their lives would forever change.

Once the author's children were grown and gone into their own lives, he began to make room for hours of journaling each day. These seeds would grow into essays and into this book establishing JRW Case as a bicycle poet-warrior of the literary world.