© Atlantic Monthly Press

Leif Enger on the road
An account of a national book tour from the inside

November 28, 2001—Home Sweet Home
This journal was meant to be something more conventional—a genial entry every 10 days or so looking candidly at the book tour. It was simple at first, when the plan was to write aboard airplanes; but when the tour changed to an epic drive (23 states in 31 days) things got frantic. Suddenly, in addition to readings and finding my way through strange cities, there were all these miles to drive—10,000 miles, an average of more than 300 a day. Like freight pilots and musicians, I began to lose track of where I was, particularly when waking in the morning. My reserves of determination, meager to start with, shifted away from journal-writing toward practical matters like staying alert at the wheel. Therefore I arrived home with a weary mind, a pile of travel notes, and a burdened conscience. Having now slept off the first and organized the second, let's see what can be done about lightening the third.

Highlights:
THE NAPA VALLEY, which I'd not seen since a visit to my elegant aunt and uncle more than 20 years ago. On that visit, they took me to Point Reyes, where Sir Francis Drake landed with his grumbling crew; to the great redwood forest near San Francisco; and through Napa, with its miles of grapevines and its magnificent haciendas, farms like none I'd ever seen. What I remember is the liquid feel of the sunlight in vineyard country, and the exotic shimmer of ragtops scooting down the highway.

This time around, it seemed less mysterious but just as lovely. I signed in Sonoma just after the annual Crush Festival, when the smell of grapes rolls through like a pleasant fog; at a store in San Francisco where readers were served eight kinds of appetizers unidentifiable to me; in Santa Cruz at the wonderful Capitola Book Café.

The days were clear, the winds slight, the traffic less cumbrous than advertised. Best of all, my elegant aunt came to one of the readings, having not aged since 1979 (my uncle, tired from travel and too much Shakespeare, stayed home in Sacramento).

DENVER The Tattered Cover, Denver's famed bookstore, is so large you want to vanish for days in its stacks, with a staff so well-read you rarely need the provided book-search computers. Years ago, the Tattered Cover commissioned portraits of every author who came for a signing. These hang in a wide hall next to the reading room—it's the only place you'll ever see a picture of Jon Hassler immediately next to one of Elvira, of late-night-movie fame.

Incidentally, one of the finest things about a book tour is the number of relatives who come out to see you; in Denver these included several I didn't know existed. It's like getting a present unexpectedly; like finding a fresh cheesecake in a refrigerator you were certain was empty. We shook hands, talked late, and took each other's pictures.

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA Besides its Southern allure (the Biscuitville fast-food chain has the best grits I encountered on the tour), Raleigh has Nancy Olson, who runs Quail Ridge Books with irresistible zeal. Among the considerable audience she brought out—for an author virtually no one here had heard of—were at least two locally based writers, an English teacher, and a number of college students who mentioned they were attending their first reading ever. These, under gentle grilling, admitted they'd only come because their humanities professor required it. The professor was nowhere to be seen.

NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA Nearly the last stop—I have, at this writing, only three more scheduled signings, all of them nearby. But Northfield is always a joyous stop, for its history alone; the reading was held in a dance studio a block from the bank unsuccessfully held up by the James and Younger gang.

A lot of people came, plus the studio boasts a mirrored wall which straightaway doubled the crowd. The bank, by the way, is a museum now, well worth your time, though it no longer displays the skeleton of the bandit Charlie Pitts—apparently there was some question whether the bones were really Charlie's. Then too the matter of good taste arose. This was years ago; where the poor fellow resides now is anyone's guess.

Well, let's wind this up. A long trip calls for summary, I suppose, and at this point a good essayist, a Barton Sutter, a Paul Gruchow, would set down a paragraph condensing the miles, geography traversed, and people encountered into a wise nub of revealed truth. This however is too large a cargo for me and is the reason I don't write essays.

What I can say truthfully is: It is good to be home. Finally arriving at our dead-end road, under sunset skies, the beauty of a small farm in central Minnesota seemed easily the equal of anything offered in 10,000 previous miles. Instead of confused, I wake up grateful, most mornings at first light. I know precisely where I am.

Read more journal entries