The Great American Wagon Road is the story of three completely different individuals who by chance find themselves traveling together to California. First we meet Leatherwood, a drifting street musician with a mysterious, tragic past. He hitches a ride with Paul, a stiff academic on a spiritual quest. But everything changes when they cross paths with Lara, a Grateful Dead fan who is returning to the mainstream after two years on the road. The book is first and foremost a compelling road narrative and a description of the dynamics of a sexual triangle. But the novel goes deeper, as it probes the classic themes of death, spirituality, love, and identity. Finally, it is an unforgettable rendering of the American Experience. The Great American Wagon Road is Book One of the trilogy, A Pilgrimage to Ojai. Book Two, narrated by Lara, is titled The Gathering at Big Sur. And Book Three is Paul's Ojai Journal. Each book is narrated by one of the three main characters and each is complete unto itself. However the three together form parts of a whole powerful story.

The Great Valley Road of Virginia chronicles the story of one of America's oldest, most historic, and most geographically significant roads. Emphasized throughout the chapters is a concern for landscape character and the connection of the land to the people who traveled the road and to permanent residents, who depended upon it for their livelihoods. Also included are chapters about the towns supported by the road as well as the relationship of physical geography (the lay of the land) to the engineering of the road. More than one hundred maps, photographs, engravings, and line drawings enhance the book's value to scholars and general readers alike. Published in association with the Center for American Places

Identifies important overland wagon roads used by Americans from about 1735-1815.

A new American journey.

Army representatives in New Mexico were more enthusiastic about the road's readiness."

In 1752 an enslaved Pennsylvania ironworker named Ned purchased his freedom and moved to Virginia on the upper James River. Taking the name Edward Tarr, he became the first free black landowner west of the Blue Ridge. Tarr established a blacksmith shop on the Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia to the Carolinas and helped found a Presbyterian congregation that exists to this day. Living with him was his white, Scottish wife, and in a twist that will surprise the modern reader, Tarr’s neighbors accepted his interracial marriage. It was when a second white woman joined the household that some protested. Tarr’s already dramatic story took a perilous turn when the predatory son of his last master, a Charleston merchant, abruptly entered his life in a fraudulent effort to reenslave him. His fate suddenly hinged on his neighbors, who were all that stood between Tarr and a return to the life of a slave. This remarkable true story serves as a keyhole narrative, unlocking a new, more complex understanding of race relations on the American frontier. The vividly drawn portraits of Tarr and the women with whom he lived, along with a rich set of supporting characters in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia, provide fascinating insight into the journey from slavery to freedom, as well as the challenges of establishing frontier societies. The story also sheds light on the colonial merchant class, Indian warfare in southwest Virginia, and slavery’s advent west of the Blue Ridge. Contradicting the popular view of settlers in southern Virginia as poor, violent, and transient, this book--with its pathbreaking research and gripping narrative--radically rewrites the history of the colonial backcountry, revealing it to be made up largely of close-knit, rigorously governed communities.