Description:
Brian Newhouse begins his bicycle trek across America with a rear wheel dipped in the Pacific Ocean and three rules: no walking hills, no car rides, and no hangers-on. He knows the route--eastward from Anacortes, Washington to the coast of Maine--but doesn't know why he's going. It's only after some serious road time that A Crossing defines itself as the 28-year-old's spiritual and personal awakening. As Newhouse battles prairie headwinds, mountain climbs, and an incessantly sore butt, he slowly (after all, he has loads of time) confronts the depth and dynamics of his relationship with his noncommunicative, fundamentalist Christian father, an equally religious girlfriend, and finally, faith itself. By journey's end, Newhouse finds himself on a new route: the enlightening road to his own spirituality--with signs to his own future as a father. "My children," he writes, "will never have to wonder, never have to practically kill themselves to find out, if their old man loved them." Although A Crossing often detours into self-absorption as Newhouse searches for spiritual truth, physical descriptions of America's northern tier and wily characters such as a member of the First Church of the Absurd--the most spiritual person the author has ever met--help lighten the route. And the monster journey's logistical details are enough to keep even the most ardent bike enthusiast interested. --Rob McDonald
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