Following his painful divorce, Gus Steadman embarks on a cross-country road trip that ultimately lands him in his hometown after a dozen years of self-imposed exile. A perpetual dilettante infected with a near-debilitating nostalgia for his fading youth, 30-year-old Gus is finally ready to get his life in gear and live in the moment when he discovers that his prep school pal is running for mayor against a twenty-year incumbent and former civil rights activist. Hoping to kick-start his life he joins the campaign only to find himself falling deeper and deeper into the absurd, underhanded world of urban politics. In the end, and after all sorts of unexpected doors have opened along the way, it's up to him to choose where his loyalties lie and his principles stand. The Best of Intentions is the timeless story of the soul searcher striving to reconcile past with present, theory with practice, idealism with pragmatism. It interrogates the promises of opportunity and unmasks the perils of upward mobility; pits our undying hunger for spiritual connectedness against our insatiable thirst for worldly validation. Most of all, it explores the individual's fight to live of integrity in a confusing world devoid of easy answers.
From the book: My version of the story begins the day I packed my car and took off on a twenty-seven day soul-searching expedition across the United States. The trip’s initial purpose had been ordinary enough: I needed to recharge. Holding it together for an entire school year while my marriage was disintegrating had taken everything I had. Looking back I’d say it was a miracle that I hadn’t just crumbled one day in class; simply fallen to pieces in front of my students. I planned to soak in the land in hopes that a concentrated and prolonged acquaintance with the outdoors wouldfortify me. I figured that driving long stretches beneath a humongous sky with the wind flapping at my side and thesun chasing me like a mad hawk was just what I needed to clear my mind. Once again I was going to be the master of my own goddamn destiny.
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Cover painting by Ellington Robinson
THE BEST OF INTENTIONS