The Long Way Around: A Journey Of Inspiration Set In Rural Iowa

The Long Way Around: A Coming-of-Age Story of Love, Loss, and Redemption in Rural America

A Small-Town Coming-of-Age Novel About Family, Love, and Second Chances.


Ryan Meyers is a teenage boy on the cusp of adulthood struggling to find his place in the world while growing up in the American Heartland. As he navigates the challenges of rural life, he faces heartbreak, loss, and a life-changing accident that alters his future.
With his cantankerous grandfather—his only living relative—slowly succumbing to illness, Ryan's world is turned upside down. To make matters worse, his first love, Mary, abruptly ends their relationship without explanation. Just when he thinks things couldn’t get worse, a horrifying event in the woods leaves him injured and lost.
Determined to find meaning in his pain, Ryan embarks on a soul-searching journey far from home. But when he returns to the small town he once longed to escape, he discovers that sometimes, the answers we seek are where we least expect them.

Perfect for fans of coming-of-age dramas, heartfelt family sagas, and emotionally rich storytelling.

Buy now and get lost in Ryan's unforgettable journey of love, loss, and redemption.

  Author Douglas Cavanaugh hails from Iowa and is an American expat who lives in Croatia. His initial observations while transitioning to life in the war-torn Balkans in 1996 spurred the genesis of his first novel, the spy-thriller classic, Into Hell's Fire.
 During the early 1990s, prior to leaving the United States, he lived and worked in two rural communities in northeast Iowa. Fond memories of this area were his inspirational basis for his second novel, The Long Way Around.
Video trailers of both books can be viewed on youtube.

  Aside from a full-time job and his novel-writing hobby, Douglas enjoys spending time with his family and taking long walks on the nearby forest trails with his Soft-Coated Wheaton Terrier. He has traveled extensively and is always in search of new, exotic settings and ideas for his next novel.