Gerry Tales

In this collection of personal essays, Gerry Boylan recounts a lifetime of adventures and misadventures. His stories are sweet, loopy, and hilarious, ranging from hitchhiking experiences gone awry to the birth of his first child (sans painkillers or doctors, but with pinochle-playing buddies and malted milkshakes). Whether he’s fleeing in terror from a marauding bat or causing a thousand-bicycle pileup in Beijing, he’ll have you laughing at his unique mixture of lunacy and heart.

Getting There

Luke Moore, a hitchhiker at heart, feels most at home on the road. So it’s no surprise that as he and his wife drive their daughter to college for the first time, the middle-aged husband and father picks up a mysterious hitchhiker—and is quickly reminded of his unstable and often reckless youth.

Thirty years earlier, in 1973, after a shocking event turned his life upside down, Luke set off on his own. Hitchhiking along I-75 between Florida and Michigan, he not only met an extraordinary cast of characters, survived the dangers of the road, and fell in love, but he also witnessed tragedy and struggled to find himself.

Getting There follows Luke as he reconciles the boy he was with the man he’s become. As he reflects on the life lessons he’s learned on the road, he wonders how he can convince his daughter not to make the same mistakes he’s made, and whether it’s wise to trust the stranger sitting in the backseat.

Getting There is now available!