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After losing her teenage son to a car accident, Jeanne's grief hangs on her like a heavy woolen blanket. She struggles to maintain a normal, daily routine. Her daughters are reaching the age where they are ready to start living their own lives, and her husband has taken a new position, which means leaving the Northeast and relocating to Florida. Their marriage is strained, and Jeanne's husband suggests she take some time to travel across Canada before heading south to join him in Florida. Although uncertain about going to Alaska, Jeanne does take her pop-up camper and her son's dog, Gulliver, and begins a meandering route across Canada. Her journey brings her into contact with all sorts of people who share their stories on the road, and Jeanne begins to grow more comfortable with her trip and the destination of Alaska. However, her trip takes an unexpected turn when Gulliver gets sick. Jeanne must learn to navigate Gulliver's illness, her newfound freedom since deciding a divorce is a must, and the attention of an outdoorsman.
Elliott's memoir is one of grief and recovery. Jeanne, a character the author has chosen to represent herself, confronts her loss and the limbo that she has been living in while taking a classic road trip across picturesque Canada and into the cold beauty of Alaska. During this journey, she regains her inner strength and resolve, learns how to live with the memories of Joey, and makes a determined step in the direction of a new life.
Memoirs often explore grief and travel, and the author's work brings several to mind. On the Road, Kerouac's travel memoir, is one of the most famous. Elliott's book focuses more on the impact of her sorrow on her life and how the road helped her come to terms with it. In this sense, it has more in common with Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Didion's memoir chronicles her pain following the year after her husband passed away. Both authors use their writing as part of their healing journey. Didion approaches her own grief more directly, observing her behaviors and changes and trying to write analytically about what she sees in herself. Elliott pays more attention to the journey she is on, but simply through her participation in the trip and the space it affords to deal with her emotions, she too makes meaningful strides with her anguish.
The prose in Elliott's book is well-written, and her descriptions of the wilderness are beautifully expressed. The relationship between the author and Gulliver as they make their way across Canada is subtly developed until it becomes powerful and keenly felt. Elliott's healing is evident to the reader as she meets new people and begins to engage with the life happening all around her. It is through this lens that the reader sees the healing power of the natural world and the importance of fostering relationships. This book will be appreciated by anyone interested in travel memoirs or books about characters overcoming profound emotional pain.
A 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist