The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean - Hardcover

Caputo, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805094466 ISBN 13: 9780805094466

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2013

Synopsis

In The Longest Road, one of America's most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.

Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he'd drive from the nation's southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.

So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as "Fred" and "Ethel") from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today's United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Caputo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including A Rumor of War, one of the most highly praised books of the twentieth century. His novels include Acts of Faith, The Voyage, Horn of Africa, and his most recent, Crossers. He and his wife, Leslie Ware, divide their time between Norwalk, Connecticut, and Patagonia, Arizona.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Miles traveled: 8,314. Vistas condemned: wind turbine farms. Vistas endorsed: the Natchez Trace and the Alaska Highway. Lesson learned: don’t drive a trailer where you can’t get it out. Such were Caputo’s concrete experiences on a 2011 road trip in search of answers to a more ethereal question, What unifies America? That query, if already asked by literary roadsters like Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck, bears repeating by writers of any stature, whether unknown or, like Caputo, renowned. Looking at age 70, Caputo felt a bucket-list impetus to drive the furthest border-to-border route in America: Key West, Florida, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. With his pickup truck towing a symbol of highway wanderlust, an Airstream trailer, Caputo convinced his two dogs and, perhaps less quickly, his wife to climb aboard. Vowing to avoid interstates and motels, he loosely followed the historic route of Lewis and Clark. Injecting misadventures into the narrative, Caputo recounts an overland voyage that emphasizes the people he meets: Christian evangelicals; volunteers helping tornado-struck Tuscaloosa, Alabama; a Missouri farmer; residents of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; and an assortment of Alaskan eccentrics. Pithily capturing their characters and opinions about the state of America, Caputo snares reading devotees of a classic American theme, the road trip. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new book from the Pulitzer Prize–winning Caputo, famed for his soldier’s memoir of the Vietnam conflict, A Rumor of War (1977), is always an event. --Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805094466
• ISBN 13: 9780805094466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 320