THE CHANGE

A meandering road trip with an aging dog helps a woman find some direction in her life.

Soderlind had wanted to take a road trip into the middle of the U.S. with her dog, Colby, in tow for a long time. After ending a long-term relationship, she and Colby set out in a small camping trailer to explore the lost and forgotten parts of the country. In this emotional travel memoir, the author ponders the many changes that come with entering one’s 50s. Soderlind’s midlife crisis sent her along the American back roads in search of struggling towns that used to be buzzing with life and industry. The author interweaves a brief history of each neglected or deserted location with her own longings, fears, and worries, giving her descriptions a nostalgic or melancholic mood. Soderlind visited the Erie Canal, Buffalo, and small towns in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In each locale, she met with locals who were sometimes earnest, sometimes reluctant to share their histories with a stranger, yet she manages to piece together an intriguing map of middle America. Among her many observations, the author writes about old grain silos being turned into climbing walls, mysterious dark tunnels that didn’t seem to end, glorious sunsets on the edges of lakes, and, most importantly, a perspective on life that she wouldn’t have discovered without this trip. “It seems that once you understand Buffalo,” she writes, “by simply adjusting names and locations and substituting commodities once made or exchanged, you could understand most cities in most places. You would know why the Rust Belt was rusty and how the general state of chaos in the world was in most ways utterly predictable.” Ultimately, Soderlind shows how each place she visited was unique and deserving of attention.

Entertaining, informative stories of a distressed America and of a woman looking for answers.