'A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow': An American Hitchhiking Odyssey
By Tim Brookes
Adventure Press
National Geographic .
First Printing , 2000 .
Hard cover book with dust jacket . Nice condition .
From Booklist
In 1973, Brookes, then a British student, spent three months hitchhiking across America, dazzled by a girl from Iowa he had met at Oxford. In 1998, Brookes, now a writer, teacher, and longtime Vermonter, decides to re-create that experience and hitchhike to the same places again. He's not crazy: he periodically takes trains or buses and carries a cell phone in his daughter's sock. He tracks a few of the people and most of the places he encountered the first time, but this is no self-referential wallowing. He's not interested in reliving the past but in illuminating the present, and he carries both a cheerful lack of anxiety and a disarming lack of pretense. In crisp, short chapters, he recounts conversations with the folks who pick him up and his responses to the places he goes: a gospel church in San Francisco; a previous wife in Seattle; a desolate reservation in South Dakota. He finds kindness and gratitude, and he clearly has those within himself as well. GraceAnne A. DeCandido
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Product Details
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: National Geographic (July 1, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0792276833
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