The Long Way Home: A Novel of Crossing

When data architect Christian Pearce wakes one ordinary Tuesday morning with an inexplicable pressure beneath his sternum — and a stranger on the F train hands him a battered blue book with a single underlined sentence — he does the only thing that makes sense: he walks away from everything. He leaves his luxury Manhattan apartment, his career, and his fiancée, and heads west on foot, armed with nothing but a backpack and a destination he can’t name. From the unforgiving marshes of the Meadowlands to the soul-stripping floors of an Iowa slaughterhouse, from the fog-laced Rockies to a freezing river that demands he surrender the last thing he’s holding onto, Christian’s journey is equal parts pilgrimage and unraveling. Along the way, he encounters guides who seem to know his name before he