Driving to Detroit: An Automotive Odyssey

I like road stories and this is one of the best. Part travelogue and part personal odyssey, Lesley Hazleton takes us on a fascinating trip across this country and reminds us how lucky we are to live in such an amazing place. From the saltflats of Utah to the backroads of the midwest we are introduced to a world most of us are too busy gunning down the Interstate to see. Along the way she thinks about her life and family and comes to terms with the passing of her Dad.I felt as if I was there with her, as she traveled and as she worked out how she was feeling about what was happening. Brilliant!

OK, so aluminum doesn't rust and it wasn't Rambo who said "I'll be back." Big deal. "Driving to Detroit" is a still compelling read, more memoir than textbook, an engaging account of a woman's uniquely personal journey. Those looking for nuts-and-bolts automotive statistics and measurements should look elsewhere; those who love "road" books, however, will find this one worth adding to their collections. Is it a woman's book? Definitely. But it's also a book for men who love cars and aren't afraid to examine that love affair more deeply.

Driving to Detroit is about automobiles to about the same extent as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repairing is about motorcycles. Driving to Detroit is about America. It is a deeply penetrating, highly compelling, extremely entertaining analysis of our culture. People who like Barbara Kingsolver's fiction or William Least Heat Moon's travel journalism will love this book. It belongs in the travel and sociology sections of bookstores, not hidden among auto-repair manuals in the transportation section which is where I always finally find it when I want copies for nieces and nephews and other friends.Ms. Hazelton writes with honesty and elegance. She exposes the strength and beauty of our special kind of aggressiveness in America, but she also exposes its ugly side -- with delicacy and compassion. She is a consumate journalist, and a thoroughly competent psychologist. She misses nothing, but has a remarkable flare for knowing how much to reveal and in what kind of time frame. I find that subtle insights created by her apparently innocent descriptions of people and events are still seeping through the layers of my awareness, bursting into consciousness and amazing me at the oddest times.Unfortunately, books like this one don't fit into the kinds of simplistic niches that make marketing easy. Driving to Detroit is about psychology, and sociology, and culture, and education; and human decency, and conflict, and generosity and opportunism; and automobiles.

In chronicling her far off-the-beaten-path 13,000 mile journey from Seattle to Detroit, Ms. Hazleton both celebrates and skewers the American love affair with the automobile.