A memoir of one young man's coming-of-age on a cross-country trek--told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the highways of America.
Ultimately, it's the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself at the most human level..
How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself.
Often he didn't know how to respond.
Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too.
But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers.
He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
Walking toward the Pacific, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer.
It would be a cross-country quest for guidance, and everyone he met would be his guide.
And listen.
So he decided he'd walk.
He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how.
At twenty-three, Andrew Forsthoefel walked out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read Walking to listen.
A memoir of one young man's coming-of-age on a cross-country trek--told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the highways of America
