David Barudin

Alternate Routes David Barudin

Alternate Routes is a true-life picaresque tale of a couple's on-the-road adventures in the dubious pursuit of finding themselves during the social upheaval of mid-1970's America. It's a romantic story told with humor and striving for insights on coming of age in any generation. Alternate Routes doesn't presume to define a generation as much as it does the decision by two people to uproot from their conventional lives and career arc and set out to travel in a truck and camper with two cats and a parrot. James Walker Trumbull III, an Ivy Leaguer who refuses to accept what life has put in front of him after graduation, leaves New York City. He meets Kyla, an off-the-farm girl from southern Utah, struggling with a fierce need for independence. A tender relationship propels their journey of self-discovery as they crisscross the American landscape on the black squiggly alternate routes of roadmaps and, eventually, off the grid. The trip is a Treasure Hunt defined by surprises and unexpected encounters with colorful fellow travelers. But neither Walker nor Kyla could have imagined a trip so different, and themselves so changed from who they were, when it began.