William Least Heat-Moon · 1982 · road
William Least Heat-Moon's 1982 classic. Newly separated and newly out of work, he set off from Missouri in a van called Ghost Dancing to circle the United States on its smallest back roads - the ones printed blue on old atlases. He went east and south first, deliberately, so as to follow spring north: thirteen thousand miles, three months, and no interstates if he could help it.
- 1Columbia
Out of a job, out of a marriage and out of ideas, Heat-Moon leaves Columbia on 19 March 1978 in a Ford van he has named Ghost Dancing, with $26 in his wallet and a plan to drive the country's smallest roads.
- 2Nameless
He goes east rather than west, following spring north as it comes - and at Nameless, Tennessee, the Watts family feed him and explain how the town got its name in an argument over the post office.
- 3The North Carolina coast
The far edge of the first leg, where he walks into the woods to find the grave of another William Trogdon, an ancestor killed by Tories in the Revolution - the one errand in a journey with no destination.
- 4The Louisiana bayous
South and west through Georgia and the Deep South to the bayous, in the part of the book thickest with people and talk - and warm enough by now that the timing of the whole circuit makes sense.
- 5Dime Box
Across Texas by way of towns chosen for their names, and cafes rated by the number of calendars on the wall. Dime Box is the method in one word: go where the map says something odd, and see who is there.
- 6The Desert Southwest
Into Arizona and the red country, where the landscape gets bigger and the people get fewer - and the book turns inward, Heat-Moon beginning to ask what he is actually doing out here on his own.
- 7The Oregon coast
North through Nevada to the Pacific, the westernmost point of the loop - about as far from a Missouri kitchen as the lower forty-eight will take a man who is not sure he wants to go back to it.
- 8The Columbia River
East along the north bank of the Columbia and up into Idaho, then along the Canadian line - the stretch where the self-doubt resolves and he starts noticing the country again rather than himself.
- 9The Northern Plains
Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota close to the border, then round the Great Lakes - wheat country, high plains and a failing water pump, in the emptiest driving of the whole circuit.
- 10Melvin Village
The last corner: New England, up to Acadia on the Maine coast and back down through the villages. Melvin Village on Lake Winnipesaukee is the sort of place the trip was for - and then he turns west for home.
- 11Columbia
Thirteen thousand miles and three months later he is back in the same town, having gone right round the rim of the country - and the last question the book asks is what a man does with that once he has parked.