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'The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir' by Sarah Kendzior
| Here's an undeniable truth that Midwesterners will not need a compass to confirm: "When you start from the center, you see America from all sides."
Sarah Kendzior hails from St. Louis and when she, her good sport of a husband and endlessly curious kids set out on one of the dozens of road trips they've taken as a family, they are seeing their country "through wide eyes, it's wonders and flaws."
And so are we.
Here's the cabin where Mark Twain grew up near the ghost town of Florida, Mo., rarely visited where it sits in the middle of an empty field.
There's the majesty of Theodore Roosevelt National Park where the sight of a herd of bison was both "blissful and heartbreaking" because they had so nearly been hunted to extinction. Kendzior is both clear-eyed and wonderfully, convincingly sentimental about America.
As her children hike alpine trails in the Grand Tetons and watch wild horses play in Pahrump, Nev., and belt out songs from the back seat, she writes, "I don't want my children to chase American illusions marketed as American dreams, but I want them to understand why things went wrong. To appreciate every day miracles and not think them small. To have reverence for the good that endures and the work to protect it."
— Kerri Miller, MPR News
Mystery character of the week answer: Tom Sawyer, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain. |
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