A Long Way From Home: Some Thoughts on Distance in Fiction

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Last summer, my family departed on what is, as of now, the longest single road trip of my life: 8 days, 9 states, and 2000 miles. At some point, about the time I drove across the state border from North Carolina into Virginia, I realized that I was pretty far away from my house, which is in Missouri.

Now, it isn’t the farthest I’d ever been from home. I’ve been to both Florida and Colorado by car, and my wife and I traveled to the United Kingdom by plane for our first anniversary. But there...