NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The triumphant true story of a woman who rode
her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see
the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of
The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion
**"The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the
one taking this trip. This is a book we can enjoy always but especially
need now."--Elizabeth Berg, author of *The Story of Arthur Truluv
In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an
impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost
her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie
wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her
doctor's advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she
bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees,
and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had
little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn't even
have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and
her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with
kindness.
Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world
transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954
and 1956, the three travelers pushed through blizzards, forded rivers,
climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by
them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles,
through America's big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met
ordinary people and celebrities--from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan)
to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers--a
permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station
in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a
decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television's influence
was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and
her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a
rapidly changing world.
