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Road Angels: Searching For Home Down America's Coast of Dreams
Ride shotgun with Kent Nerburn on a remarkable journey that uncovers the myths and dreams of America's West Coast. Fearing that his passion for life was dimming and worried that his family needed to escape the harsher realities of Minnesota life, Nerburn set out from the stark landscape of a northern winter to drive down the coastal roads of Washington, Oregon, and California. Road Angels brings us face-to-face with unexpected places and extraordinary people -- and in the end we learn what it means to find home.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
3 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Kent Nerburn
40 books449 followersI'm a child of the 60's, a son of the north, and a lover of dogs.
Grew up in a crackerbox post-war bungalow outside of Minneapolis with my mother and father, two younger sisters, various dogs and cats, and a neighborhood full of rugrat kids playing outside until called in for the night.
Studied American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Religious Studies and Humanities at Stanford University, received a Ph.D. in Religion and Art in a joint program at Graduate Theological Union and the University of California at Berkeley. Lots of learning, lots of awards. Phi Beta Kappa. Summa cum Laude. Lots of stuff that looks good on paper.
But just as important, an antique restorer's shop in Marburg, Germany; the museums of Florence; a sculpture studio in the back alleys of Pietrasanta, Italy; an Indian reservation in the forests of northern Minnesota; and, perhaps above all, the American road.
Always a watcher, always a wanderer, perhaps too empathetic for my own good, more concerned with the "other" than the "self", always more interested in what people believed than in what they thought. A friend of the ordinary and the life of the streets.
Twenty years as a sculptor -- over-life sized images hand-chiseled from large tree trunks -- efforts to embody emotional and spiritual states in wood. Then, still searching, years helping young people collect memories of the tribal elders on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation in the Minnesota north. Then writing,
always writing, finding a voice and even a calling, helping Native America tell its story.
A marriage, children, a home on a pine-rimmed lake near the Minnesota-Canadian border.
Book after book, seventeen in all, ever seeking the heartbeat of people's belief. Journeys, consolations, the caring observer, always the teacher, always the learner. Ever mindful of the wise counsel of an Ojibwe elder, "Always teach by stories, because stories lodge deep in the heart."
Through grace and good luck, an important trilogy (Neither Wolf nor Dog, The Wolf at Twilight, and The Girl who Sang to the Buffalo), a film, Minnesota Book Awards, South Dakota book of the year, many "community reads," book sales around the world.
In the end, a reluctant promoter, a quiet worker, a seeker of an authentic American spirituality, more concerned with excellence than quantity. Proud to be referred to as "a guerilla theologian" and honored to be called "the one writer who can respectfully bridge the gap between native and non-Native cultures". But more honored still to hear a twelve-year-old girl at one of my readings whisper to her mom, "He's a really nice man."
At heart, just an ordinary person, grateful to be a father and a husband, more impressed by kindness than by power, doing what I can with the skills that I have to pay my rent for my time on earth. And trying, always trying, to live by Sitting Bull's entreaty: "Come let us put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for our children."
And petting every dog that I can.
Grew up in a crackerbox post-war bungalow outside of Minneapolis with my mother and father, two younger sisters, various dogs and cats, and a neighborhood full of rugrat kids playing outside until called in for the night.
Studied American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Religious Studies and Humanities at Stanford University, received a Ph.D. in Religion and Art in a joint program at Graduate Theological Union and the University of California at Berkeley. Lots of learning, lots of awards. Phi Beta Kappa. Summa cum Laude. Lots of stuff that looks good on paper.
But just as important, an antique restorer's shop in Marburg, Germany; the museums of Florence; a sculpture studio in the back alleys of Pietrasanta, Italy; an Indian reservation in the forests of northern Minnesota; and, perhaps above all, the American road.
Always a watcher, always a wanderer, perhaps too empathetic for my own good, more concerned with the "other" than the "self", always more interested in what people believed than in what they thought. A friend of the ordinary and the life of the streets.
Twenty years as a sculptor -- over-life sized images hand-chiseled from large tree trunks -- efforts to embody emotional and spiritual states in wood. Then, still searching, years helping young people collect memories of the tribal elders on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation in the Minnesota north. Then writing,
always writing, finding a voice and even a calling, helping Native America tell its story.
A marriage, children, a home on a pine-rimmed lake near the Minnesota-Canadian border.
Book after book, seventeen in all, ever seeking the heartbeat of people's belief. Journeys, consolations, the caring observer, always the teacher, always the learner. Ever mindful of the wise counsel of an Ojibwe elder, "Always teach by stories, because stories lodge deep in the heart."
Through grace and good luck, an important trilogy (Neither Wolf nor Dog, The Wolf at Twilight, and The Girl who Sang to the Buffalo), a film, Minnesota Book Awards, South Dakota book of the year, many "community reads," book sales around the world.
In the end, a reluctant promoter, a quiet worker, a seeker of an authentic American spirituality, more concerned with excellence than quantity. Proud to be referred to as "a guerilla theologian" and honored to be called "the one writer who can respectfully bridge the gap between native and non-Native cultures". But more honored still to hear a twelve-year-old girl at one of my readings whisper to her mom, "He's a really nice man."
At heart, just an ordinary person, grateful to be a father and a husband, more impressed by kindness than by power, doing what I can with the skills that I have to pay my rent for my time on earth. And trying, always trying, to live by Sitting Bull's entreaty: "Come let us put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for our children."
And petting every dog that I can.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 1, 2008
Wonderful going down the road discovering my home in a way I've never known before... but Newborn has a tendency to get a bit self-aggrandizing and I start to want to punch him in the neck and tell him to just shut up and drive.
June 1, 2024
I have lived in California for 64 years and have never seen the things this author purports to see. I believe he greatly exaggerates or entirely makes up characters to “improve” the story. Also, he should consult maps more carefully. Did he not think local West coast folks would read his book?
June 7, 2018
(review written in 2002)
The cover, a California curve in the road, touched by thin fog. At times I loved it at other times I thought the premise and the execution of the main idea in the book as thin as the fog on the cover. But there are some great insights and some excellent descriptive passages as he winds his way from the rain soaked north of Seattle to the sun drenched possibilities of San Luis Obispo. He's trying to decide if home is indeed the wilds of northern Minnesota where he and his family currently reside, or if moving his family west will change their lives from good to better. Basically what I got from it (which may well be what I needed, or what I was capable of hearing) was that you find your place and you do your thing. It'll never be a bestseller, something is just a little too vague or what he's saying doesn't translate well into words but for anyone who knows the land he moves thru (the Northwest) then it's got a certain appeal. And a certain ability to make us aware of dreams and possibilities.
The cover, a California curve in the road, touched by thin fog. At times I loved it at other times I thought the premise and the execution of the main idea in the book as thin as the fog on the cover. But there are some great insights and some excellent descriptive passages as he winds his way from the rain soaked north of Seattle to the sun drenched possibilities of San Luis Obispo. He's trying to decide if home is indeed the wilds of northern Minnesota where he and his family currently reside, or if moving his family west will change their lives from good to better. Basically what I got from it (which may well be what I needed, or what I was capable of hearing) was that you find your place and you do your thing. It'll never be a bestseller, something is just a little too vague or what he's saying doesn't translate well into words but for anyone who knows the land he moves thru (the Northwest) then it's got a certain appeal. And a certain ability to make us aware of dreams and possibilities.
August 12, 2022
You can't go home again.
Author from Minn goes back to West Coast.
Author from Minn goes back to West Coast.
September 23, 2008
Road Angels - I won't spoil the fun of this sweet, personal book by revealing what that phrase refers to. Just know that this book is even more of Kent Nerburn than the other ones by him that I review here at Goodreads. Yet there is a familiar feel to our protagonist, for those of us who've read other works by him. In Road Angels, Nerburn finds himself on the other side of the hill, picking up speed, and reflecting on his life and times. Doing so metaphorically, he sets out to do the same literally. He puts gas in the car and goes.
We get to see his adventures on this road trip, but you should know it is not a slapstick story of misadventures on the road, nor is it aimless wandering. Nerburn seems to feel just the edge of mortality as he revists the formative places of his younger years on the Left Coast, on the Coast of Dreams, in the places that most of us only read about and see glimpses of in other people's movies. In doing so, he gives us poetic images that stand out in memory, bringing with them entire bigger stories - of volcanoes that could blow at any moment, of a coffeeshop barista who tells him how young people relate to one another these days, and a conversation on a bench in a city between two people who called it home - only one of them left. There are other memorable streams joining together into the river of Nerburn's time here on earth. If you want to know more about the man who gives us Simple Truths, A Haunting Reverence, and Neither Wolf Nor Dog, this is probably as close as you will get to finding out how Nerburn came to be the fellow we know him and treasure him as today.
We get to see his adventures on this road trip, but you should know it is not a slapstick story of misadventures on the road, nor is it aimless wandering. Nerburn seems to feel just the edge of mortality as he revists the formative places of his younger years on the Left Coast, on the Coast of Dreams, in the places that most of us only read about and see glimpses of in other people's movies. In doing so, he gives us poetic images that stand out in memory, bringing with them entire bigger stories - of volcanoes that could blow at any moment, of a coffeeshop barista who tells him how young people relate to one another these days, and a conversation on a bench in a city between two people who called it home - only one of them left. There are other memorable streams joining together into the river of Nerburn's time here on earth. If you want to know more about the man who gives us Simple Truths, A Haunting Reverence, and Neither Wolf Nor Dog, this is probably as close as you will get to finding out how Nerburn came to be the fellow we know him and treasure him as today.
November 2, 2009
4.5! I found this book randomly in a thrift store in Kansas City right before I got on a 36 hour train ride. I really loved this book, and enjoyed it thoroughly. First of all the author and I are both from Minnesota, and the book is about a journey he takes by car down the Pacific Coast to see if maybe the West Coast is where home should really be. I left Minnesota in 1999 on my own journey west. I tried out San Francisco first (didn't fit) and then ultimately moved to Portland (it fits). The midwest values, and his comments were almost like they were coming out of my own mouth. Kent really wants to figure out what it is about the west coast that keeps drawing him, and why he chooses to stay where he was born. I kept saying "me too" throughout the whole book. Sometimes there seemed to be too much detail, but I felt like the book especially in the last 50 pages spoke so many truths, and ideas that I'm really interested in and the author really brought the journey full circle for the reader. The book also gave me a few "A-HA" moments that hadn't occurred to me. Reading Road Angels reminded me why I love travel - not to have a holiday or relax, but I love to look in on what other people are up to and I'm fascinated by people in a large sociological way. Looking forward to seeing what Kent Nerburn's other books are about...
September 13, 2016
Started great but meandered toward mediocrity. Too bad...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews