GASOLINE RAINBOW

It's 1978, and eighteen-year-old Ruby Bell is desperate to escape Echo Falls, a Canadian prairie town that feels smaller by the day. Stuck living with her overprotective Uncle Em and Uncle Hank, and dreaming of a life beyond the horizon, she hatches a simple plan: graduate high school, empty her savings account, and hit the road in her 1969 Mercury Cyclone with her loyal pit bull, Otto, riding shotgun.

But the highway has other ideas.

What begins as a straightforward escape soon spirals into a wild cross-country journey filled with strange detours, unexpected danger, and the kind of people who change your life forever. Along the way, Ruby picks up three unlikely travelling companions: Lucy Witt, a heartbroken farm wife; Fintan Hart, a struggling heavy metal musician; and Cleo Lyons, a sharp-tongued drifter hiding secrets of her own. Add a pair of coveted red Chuck Taylors and two deeply unhinged twins to the mix, and Ruby finds herself far from anything she planned.

Her journey eventually leads her to Vancouver Island and the Emerald Isle Retreat, a secluded spiritual sanctuary run by the enigmatic Oswald Wise. There, Ruby is forced to confront the question she's been running from all along: what if home isn't a place you leave behind, but something you carry with you?

Loosely inspired by The Wizard of Oz, Gasoline Rainbow is a psychedelic coming-of-age road novel about friendship, identity, belonging, and the winding roads that lead us back to ourselves.