The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DGB8QYW | Format: EPUB
The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean Description
September 1996 found Philip Caputo on Barter Island, a wind-scoured rock in the Beaufort Sea populated by two hundred Inupiat and a handful of whites. As he gazed upon an American flag above the only school for a 150 miles, he marveled that the children in that school pledged allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants on Key West, almost six thousand miles away. Awed by America's vastness and diversity and filled with a renewed appreciation for its cohesiveness, an idea began to form. With enough time, gas money, and nerve he could drive from the southernmost point to the northernmost point of the United States that is reachable by road, talking to people as he went and trying to better understand what holds our great country together.
Cicada-like, the idea went dormant, not to be reawakened for 14 years. In 2011, America was struggling through the greatest economic downturn since the Depression and was more divided than it had been in living memory. Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 11 hours and 49 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: HighBridge Company
- Audible.com Release Date: July 16, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DGB8QYW
Primarily a journalist and a writer of novels, Philip Caputo wanders off the beaten path smack into the Travel genre with his latest book The Longest Road. He takes us on a road trip from Key West, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska on the Arctic Ocean, or, if you like. from the southernmost point to northernmost point of the United States -- that one would be able to drive between.
The 'longest road' trip was an idea that festered a while with Caputo. It germinated way back in 1996 when the author, on a hunting and fishing expedition up on Barter Island near Deadhorse, mused over the idea of Inuit children at the island's only school pledging allegiance to the same flag as Cuban-American children living on another island: his old stomping grounds of Key West some six thousand miles southeast. For reasons unknown to Caputo, the notion of the transverse journey "went dormant", burrowed away "cicada-like" for fourteen years. But he can pinpoint just what woke up the idea: mortality. The death of his father, a traveling journeyman who had always inspired his own inner nomad, in 2010 quickened some biological Timex within him. At age 71 there was no time like the present for an epic journey.
So much for the premise, how about the purpose. Besides the obvious novelty of geographical conquest, just what is the underlying goal here? Is there something the author wants to accomplish or discover on this trek? Well, it turns out there is a question he's been dying to have answered. It's a poll-like question: "What holds us together?" What is it that unites our great nation from coast to coast and from Key West to Deadhorse? Caputo is determined to slog across the deep south, the breadbasket, the Pacific Northwest on up through Canada and back into Seward's Folly to find out.
I selected this book because I have a big case of wanderlust, and I knew that the author would offer plenty of tips and tidbits about traveling across America. He and his wife and two dogs went from south to north, and they traveled pulling an Airstream trailer named Ethel. We plan to travel from east to west in a Toyota Highlander and stay in motels. Caputo and his wife learned so much that they became what he called "roads scholars." I learned quite a lot about this great county and its people and places from Caputo's experiences.
Basically a travel journal with hundreds of facts and interesting details, this book is a must read for anyone setting traveling across America. Caputo and Leslie left Key West, Florida and ended their trip in Deadhorse, Alaska, a town that he calls "the strangest and ugliest town in the country, so ugly that it's fascinating." Along the way, they met and spent time with quite a variety of folks of all ages, socioeconomic statuses, and races. From doing some relief work in Alabama to visiting the Custer Battlefield, their journey was quite interesting.
While there's too much richness in the book to do the stories justice, I nevertheless want to mention a few things that further kindled my travel yen. Caputo calls the Nebraska Sandhills one of the "lonesomest regions in the country," and his wife fell for the Ozarks. "Have you noticed how ever noticed how every square inch is covered in green?" she asked him. Caputo's conversations with people as diverse as Cole in South Dakota to Wiren in Chicken, Alaska reminded me of how awesome and varied America's people are.
Another plus to The Longest Road are the frequent references to writers such as Steinbeck William Heat Moon, and Walt Whitman.
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