The Slow Road to Deadhorse Free online reading

An offbeat, poignant and life-affirming American road-trip from 'the English Bill Bryson.' Award-winning author James Anthony's 'modern times travel masterpiece' invokes Kerouac and Steinbeck as he uncovers the people, places and history of North America with his wry British perspective.

Burnt out after running his own business, James Anthony arrives in the pastel skies of Florida's Key West to start a journey of catharsis. His destination? Deadhorse, Alaska, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, via the backroads of the continent.

Dodging burly wildlife keen to take a bite out of him, Anthony meets the quirky, good-hearted folk of North America’s backwaters, learning how Britain influenced the continent’s history, much of it painfully unsavoury.

Along the way, he gets serenaded in an African-American Church in Miami; goes peanut farming in Georgia; hitches a ferry ride across the Mississippi with moonshine-drinking locals; gets drunk with a North Dakotan farmer who has three months to live; survives a haunting in Saskatchewan; nearly gets squashed by an irate buffalo in the Northern Rockies; and arrives at the Arctic Ocean just before freeze-up.

Passionate, touching, hilarious, and insightful, The Slow Road to Deadhorse chronicles an Englishman’s road-trip through the North America most people never get to see. Come along for the ride.