The Memory of RunningThe Memory of Running
Title rated 3.95 out of 5 stars, based on 40 ratings(40 ratings)
Book, 2005
Current format, Book, 2005, , Available .Book, 2005
Current format, Book, 2005, , Available . Offered in 0 more formatsWorking as a quality control inspector at a toy factory in Rhode Island, friendless alcoholic Smithy Ide considers himself a loser until a tragic event prompts him to set off on an epic cross-country bicycle journey that promises him a final chance to become the man he has always wanted to be. 300,000 first printing.
Working as a quality control inspector at a toy factory in Rhode Island, friendless alcoholic Smithy Ide considers himself a loser until a tragic event prompts him to set off on an epic cross-country bicycle journey.
Meet Smithson "Smithy" Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy-action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, especially Smithy's own, he's a loser. Then, within the span of one week, his beloved parents are killed in a car crash, and Smithy learns that his emotionally troubled, long-lost sister, Bethany, has turned up in a morgue in Los Angeles. Unmoored by the loss of his entire family - Smithy had always hoped Bethany might return - he rolls down the driveway of his parents' house on his old Raleigh bicycle into an epic journey that will take him clear across the country.
As Smithy pedals across America - through New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a few - he encounters humanity at its best and worst and begins to remember an early life that too many beers have blotted out. The baseball games, the home-cooked meals, the soothing presence of his salt-of-the-earth parents; none of it could transform the dark truth of his sister's madness.
Working as a quality control inspector at a toy factory in Rhode Island, friendless alcoholic Smithy Ide considers himself a loser until a tragic event prompts him to set off on an epic cross-country bicycle journey.
Meet Smithson "Smithy" Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy-action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, especially Smithy's own, he's a loser. Then, within the span of one week, his beloved parents are killed in a car crash, and Smithy learns that his emotionally troubled, long-lost sister, Bethany, has turned up in a morgue in Los Angeles. Unmoored by the loss of his entire family - Smithy had always hoped Bethany might return - he rolls down the driveway of his parents' house on his old Raleigh bicycle into an epic journey that will take him clear across the country.
As Smithy pedals across America - through New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a few - he encounters humanity at its best and worst and begins to remember an early life that too many beers have blotted out. The baseball games, the home-cooked meals, the soothing presence of his salt-of-the-earth parents; none of it could transform the dark truth of his sister's madness.
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