There is nothing quite like the right book at the right time. I came across this at Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This book hits me as I am making my summer travel plans, as I deal with the entropy of this world, and as I piece together how my wife and I views this country we live in. This book puts into words so much of what I feel deep in my soul. This book also gives word to what I suspect my wife struggles with. I’m under no illusion life is experienced differently from the seat of a woman and mother, and this book has certainly helped me appreciate that more.
I would be the model of the Midwestern housewife the right wing claims to revere had I not spent my spare time writing books about plutocratic plots to strip my country down and sell it for parts.
Also, travel. This book does spark my desire to hit the road. For me that is a highway road trip or my slipping wish to bike across the country. To see my country, our country, from the ground level in a way that is slightly slower than the competitive 70+ miles per hour of a freeway.
Route 66 will turn one hundred years old in 2026. I am afraid it is going to die, much like the dream of escape is dying in an era of digital surveillance and climate catastrophe. But I keep chasing it, the road and the dream, because I am its target audience, the American fool.
This book doesn’t involve nostalgia, but rather longing and reflection.
Every subject I wondered about as a teenager has been investigated but in a way that makes the questions seem pointless and the answers cheap. Maybe it’s because when reality is under assault, the firsthand view matters more—a reprieve from the automated and algorithmic, the letdowns and lies. Or maybe it’s because over twenty-five years, so much was stolen so fast that taking even one thing for granted feels like a luxury we cannot afford.
I had already recommended this book to several people before I finished it. I gently placed it at the top of my wife’s to be read pile.
The Midwest is like that. If you stick with it, it will reward you. I’ve been disappointed in the Midwest, but I’ve never been betrayed by it, because it wears its heart and its wounds in the open.