Road trips have always been more important than the destination. Authors Anne Hartnett and Kevin Wilson discuss the coincidences that connect their favorite road trip stories and their latest novels.
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Juana Summers, host:
The most important character in any road trip story is the car. When Anne Hartnett was writing “The Road to Tender Hearts,” the character was a white Prius. But when it came time to design the cover…
Annie Hartnett: The art department didn’t like it. They didn’t like the white Prius on the cover. So he said, could it be the red Mustang? And I felt like a very different kind of character owning a red Mustang than a white Prius. So I said these could be acceptable cars and, sure, they could be red. And I was still editing the book. So I went back and I changed the whole character of the car.
Summers: Hartnett’s book, released last year, follows 67-year-old PJ Holliday, his estranged daughter, and his newly adopted granddaughter and nephew on an unexpected road trip to reconnect with PJ’s high school crush. The final cover featured four passengers, an orange cat and the newly written car – a red Volvo.
Hartnett: After we changed cars we finished the cover and then the other day, I saw that People magazine had posted Kevin Wilson’s new novel. So I opened it up, and I was like, Oh my God. This is the same cover.
Summers: Kevin Wilson’s “Run for the Hills” is another road trip novel. It is the story of four step-siblings who track down the father who abandoned them. Its cover features four siblings, a chicken and a red PT Cruiser.
Hartnett: I texted Kevin. I was like, I think they’re going to move my date because I’m going to make a “profound impact” on your “Armageddon.”
Kevin Wilson: Two writers who never let their characters go anywhere suddenly write road trip novels at the same time.
Summer: With so many people hitting the road this summer, we reunited Hartnett and Wilson and asked them to share their favorite road trip books and memories.
Hartnett: One book I read when I was writing “Tender Hearts” was “The Flying Troutmans” by Miriam Toews, and that’s probably one of my favorite road trip books. It’s about a woman, maybe 30, and her sister who is in a mental hospital. And she drives her niece and nephew across the country in search of their father.
And then one of my favorite road trip stories is “Car Accident While Hitchhiking,” and it’s one of my favorites because – I’m very irritated about people killing animals on a road trip in a novel, but this is the story where the animal is killed. Animals always die. But it does some beautiful things with the characters.
Wilson: I think, for me, it’s not really a road trip novel, but when I started thinking about writing a road trip novel I read Charles Portis’s “True Grit.” Mattie Ross recruits Rooster Cogburn to go into the unknown western regions to avenge her father’s murder. And just the movement of that book and what kind of uneasy relationship there was between these two strangers – or three strangers – as they navigated that journey. Charles Portis also wrote “Dog of the South” and “Masters of Atlantis”. As such, he is an expert in the strangeness of being in a new place, liking, communicating, and getting there. That’s why I love that stuff.
And the other one I thought of was Imogen Binney’s “Nevada.” And the best thing about it is that this is a trans woman who is completely screwed and has had her life ruined and steals her girlfriend’s car and drives out west. And I think what I like about it as a road trip novel is that it kind of erases the actual driving and stuff. Like, you just have to see, like, what triggers it and then the arrival and then the possibility of another road trip.
Hartnett: People say they don’t like road trip books. And I wondered why that might be, and I understood it. And I think it’s because you can’t use the smaller characters in the same way that you can in other books, and you also can’t like – the space is harder because you’re going from place to place. So every place has to leave a big impression. Your first conversation with each character should make it clear who they are. But then again, I think the magic of road trips in real life is how quickly you get a feel for a place, how many strange things and strange people you encounter if you take a cross-country road trip.
Wilson: People who say they don’t like them – I’m curious about that. ‘Cause, I mean, I don’t know if my characters really think of it as a road trip as much as they think of it – Mad keeps calling it a quest. And discoveries are things that people love, you know?
Hartnett: Yes.
Wilson: He likes fantasy stories like that. So I try to think about it more, you know? And I think Anne’s book is wonderful at finding key ways to improve it. Like, I have to say, like, one of my difficulties with road trips is that I don’t like conflict, and I don’t like things happening. I just love a frictionless movement across time and space. And my editor had to keep going, like, something needed to happen while they were driving. And I was like, oh, there’s nothing in my regular books. And it’s like, well, it’s not that noticeable because they’re in the same place forever. But if you are moving forward, there should be some chaos. So I said, oh, okay. I’ve learned something about writing.
Hartnett: I mean, you can’t get into chaos at every stop or you’ll never get where you’re going. So I think when writing a road trip, you have to think about the speed at which your car is actually going to break down? When is there going to be a gas leak in the hotel where they are staying? When are things going to stop for a minute so the characters can take stock, and when do you want them back on the road?
Wilson: I used to take these road trips all the time, and they were very short. But I had a friend in high school, Will Auba(ph), who had this crazy ability. He knew – if you called a state and a city, he could tell you the malls in that city. And we’d go on road trips, just driving around, he’d say, OK, we’re going to – in Hoover, Alabama, there’s the Riverchase Galleria. These are three stories. It has one anchor store which is Parisien. There is a JCPenney in it. And we would drive all over the place, go all over the mall. He would get a map of it for his collection, and we would drive around for days and visit shopping malls. Like, I’ve slept overnight in the parking lot of Hickory Hollow Mall. This is absolutely madness.
But those trips were so sweet because Will was my friend. He was always my friend. But we could be removed from the world we and all our other friends knew, and it would be just the two of us in the car. And it wasn’t like we were learning new things about each other. This made us realize that we can be comfortable with each other anywhere. And I don’t know. He was very special to me.
Hartnett: Road trips, especially with kids, or any time traveling in a car with kids, you can really get to know your child, too. So I have a 7 year old daughter, and really the only time she talks to me in depth is when we’re in the car going to school and back. And this is where children feel safe because they have spent a lot of time in the car. This is predictable. This is useless. So I think the claustrophobia of the car allows people to talk to each other and get to know each other in a safe way.
Wilson: For me, road trips are rarely about the destination. It’s just like that – when you live in a very small town and you feel weird inside your body, there’s actually something that reassures you, like, how big the world is and your body can travel to all those places, you know? And you can adopt it – like, this is how I fit into this space temporarily. I think that’s reassuring. But for me, it’s always – it’s based on the notion that you’re going back, that you’re returning to where you’re from.
SUMMERS: That was Kevin Wilson, author of “Run for the Hills,” and Anne Hartnett, author of “The Road to Tender Hearts.”
(SOUNDBITE OF RASCAL FLATS SONG, “LIFE’S A HIGHWAY”)
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