*Blue Highways is an autobiographical travel book, published in 1982, by William Least Heat-Moon*
In 1978, after separating from his wife and losing his job as a teacher, Heat-Moon, 38 at the time, took an extended road trip in a circular route around the United States, sticking to only the "Blue Highways". He had coined the term to refer to small, forgotten, out-of-the-way roads connecting rural America, which were drawn in blue on the Rand McNally road atlases of the time.
He outfitted his van with a bunk, a camping stove, a portable toilet and a copy of *Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks*.
Referring to the Native American resurrection ritual, he named the van *"Ghost Dancing"* and embarked on a three-month soul-searching tour of the United States, wandering from small town to small town, stopping often at towns with interesting names. The book chronicles the 13,000-mile journey and the people he meets along the way, as he steers clear of cities and interstates, avoiding fast food and exploring local American culture.
*Stories that arose from Least Heat-Moon's research as well as historical facts are included about each area visited, as well as conversations with characters* such as a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist hitchhiker, a teenage runaway, a boat builder, a monk, an Appalachian log cabin restorer, a rural Nevada prostitute, fishermen, a Hopi Native American medical student, owners of Western saloons and remote country stores, a maple syrup farmer, and Chesapeake Bay island dwellers.
*Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia*
*From Amazon:*
*About the book*:
Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.
William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."
His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.
*About the author*:
*WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON, pen name of William Trogdon*, is of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry.
He lives in Missouri on an old tobacco farm he’s returning to forest. His first book, Blue Highways, tells of a 13,000-mile journey around America on back roads and was *on The New York Times bestseller list for 42 weeks*.
His second work, PrairyErth, is a narrative exploration into a corner of the great tallgrass prairie in eastern Kansas. River-Horse gives an account of his four-month sea-to-sea voyage across the United States on rivers, lakes, and canals. In Roads to Quoz, Heat-Moon sets out for a half-dozen American destinations that have long intrigued him.
*Here, There, Elsewhere* brings together a collection of his shortform reportage about places around the world.
His most recent book, *Celestial Mechanics: A Tale for a Mid-Winter Night*, has been described as a Blue Highways of the mind. It is his debut novel.
