The Road to You: a novel

A driver, a hitchhiker, and seven days to reach the Pacific Coast. What begins as a road trip soon becomes a complex love story that will leave neither young man unchanged.
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As long as Jude Kagan can remember, he's felt like a fraud. But Matthew Banks can still remember a time when it felt like adventure was possible. Before fear set in and drove all the dreams out.

Jude is the son of immigrants, an only child who went from being a high school football star to a university dropout. At 28, he's living in his parents' basement and plotting his escape.

Matthew is 22, a disciplined scholar and frustrated idealist. He's spending the summer planting trees in a backwoods clear-cut, while he contemplates his next move.

Now, Jude's travelling cross-country before catching a flight from the Pacific coast to Tokyo. When Matthew decides to abandon his job and hitchhike out west, he meets Jude on the road, and thus begins an adventure neither of them could have anticipated.

Their journey takes them clear across the country and deep into the mystery of themselves, culminating in their visit to the spectacular Homunculus Alternative Arts Festival: an anarchic desert night of ritual, music, remembrance, and transformation under the stars.

This is a story of the road, of the land, of self-discovery, and of love - in the tradition of MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Told with humour and empathy, THE ROAD TO YOU will not disappoint those readers hungry for smart stories about how we become who we are, and how we get to where we are going.

P.D. Walter lives in Toronto.

Copyright © 2006, 2016, P. D. Walter (pdwalterbooks.com)