"Someday, This Will Only Be a Memory"

On my new book, and cold and warm comforts.

Let’s get this out of the way: My new book, The Last American Road Trip, is out today. This newsletter has 51,000 subscribers. Now if all 51,000 of you go out and buy the book, that would be terrific! I would like to stop promoting it and get back to what I love: writing.

You can order The Last American Road Trip at:

Bookshop: The Last American Road Trip a book by Sarah Kendzior - Bookshop.org US
Left Bank Books (signed!): SIGNED Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kendzior | Left Bank Books
Barnes and Noble: The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir by Sarah Kendzior, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®
Amazon: The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir: Kendzior, Sarah: 9781250879882: Amazon.com: Books

Or get it at your local independent bookseller! Independent booksellers are important bastions of free speech and civic engagement, especially in these times.

I’ve written three books and they’ve all been critically acclaimed national bestsellers. I thought that this track record would make publishing the fourth book easier, but it turns out the opposite is true. When you write a book, in 2023, about the fragility of American everyday life and the dark forces that seek to break it, and it is published, in 2025, as those dark forces are actively breaking it, it is difficult and painful.

The pain comes most from watching the devastation in action, but also because people are afraid to support the new book when the previous three books are indictments of the current president and his cohort. They would rather appease the dark forces. There have been several attempts to remove all of my books — The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, and They Knew — from circulation.

Every time I see the cover of Hiding in Plain Sight and think about how close it came to being blotted out of existence in 2024, around the time Trump got Supreme Court immunity, I get that queasy feeling like when you almost miss a flight.

I’m not going to get into that now. But I will say that buying The Last American Road Trip may help preserve my back catalog. And my back catalog preserves the work of so many writers who came before me, some of whom were censored or murdered for writing about the topics I cover. There is a chain of memory that is threatened, and the call is coming from inside the house.

* * *

The Last American Road Trip is different than my prior books. It is a memoir of love, loss, family, and America. It is how I would like to be remembered.

Most subscribers know the premise: in 2016, I became worried that the US would be destroyed through a combination of authoritarianism and environmental devastation. I vowed to take my two children, then ages five and nine, to every national park and historical site I could. Because we live in Missouri, and we didn’t have much money, we drove. We did not fly but took the backroads in every direction over eight of the most turbulent years in U.S. history. As a result, my children, now 14 and 17, saw 38 states, 21 national parks, and a wild, broad, frightening, beautiful view of America.

I had hoped I was being hypervigilant. I figured the worst that would happen, if I were wrong, is that we would take some awesome vacations. It is awful to be proven right. But I am glad we did it: for them, for you, and for myself. I’m glad that it may help preserve an accurate recollection of US history — some histories inside the book are already being censored by the government — and my place in it.

When I found out that The Last American Road Trip, the first draft of which was completed in September 2023, was going to be delayed until April Fool’s Day 2025, these lines from Mickey Newbury’s “Just Dropped In” echoed in my mind:

Somebody painted April Fool’s in big black letters on a dead-end sign
I had my foot on the gas when I left the road and blew out my mind…

(BTW the Winter Winds album has the best version of this song; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I know because I listened to it 4000 times while writing The Last American Road Trip.)

2023 was one of the worst years of my life. I had anticipatory grief for my father, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer that spring (this is mentioned briefly in the book, so I can mention it here, I suppose). I had anticipatory grief for my homeland, because officials do not let a seditionist run, unpunished, for president, unless the plan is reinstallation.

I wanted to write something beautiful that preserved the love I have for everything I was about to lose.

I nodded dutifully as people more powerful than me proclaimed that reinstallation was impossible and that The Last American Road Trip would be released in a carefree time. And then I put my heart on the line, because everything else was there already.

* * *

There’s a phrase I have repeated my whole life when I face a situation that causes anxiety or fear. Someday, this will only be a memory. I like this phrase because it doesn’t lie. Good or bad, the event will end, and it will only be a memory. It will all be over, and the anxiety will abate. This has never failed to ease my mind.

But now, when I see the land that I love threatened with destruction, the phrase haunts me: someday, this will only be a memory. It makes me relieved I wrote it all down. Memories can be marred by trauma and time. I am glad I wrote The Last American Road Trip when I did, in 2023, even if it ends up being my last ride.

If this will only be a memory, let it be an enduring one. Let it be one that continues in the form autocrats have the hardest time killing: words. Letters and lore, documentation and dreams.

Someday, I’ll be a memory, too, but the words — the words will stay.

* * *

I have not written many new articles here lately and I cannot wait to return. That will likely not happen until the tour ends. I love meeting my readers, but I do not enjoy constant self-promotion during a political apocalypse! But I’ve been doing interviews. If you’re hungry for something new from me, check out the list of links below.

Most of all — thank you. Last week, I went to my beloved local bookstore, Left Bank Books, to sign over 600 preordered copies of The Last American Road Trip. Many readers left me deeply moving messages when they placed their orders.

People wrote that my writing makes them feel less alone. I want to say, with immense gratitude, that the same is true for me. Reading your messages was an absolute highlight of my year.

OK folks, I gotta run. I promise I’ll be back. If you like The Last American Road Trip, please tell a friend, quote it, share it, promote it — whatever! My books have always been successful through word of mouth. Word of mouth is harder now due to the breakdown of social media, the manipulation of algorithms, and corporate fear of the government, so I appreciate these efforts more than ever.

Interviews, excerpts, and more:

Vanity Fair: An excerpt of chapter two, in which my family visits Mark Twain sites from Missouri to Connecticut and beyond (non-paywalled version here)

The Mark Thompson Show: She Predicted It All 10 Years Ago!! The Last American Road Trip, Sarah Kendzior (this is my favorite interview on the book so far, in part because I got to distill the last ten years of crises into a ten-minute explanation at the start)

The St. Louis Post Dispatch: Sarah Kendzior takes us on 'The Last American Road Trip'

St Louis Public Radio: Sarah Kendzior’s ‘Last American Road Trip’ paints beautiful and scarred portrait of changing country

The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #89: Sarah Kendzior (this is a long Q & A that gets at the heart of the book; I enjoyed doing this and signed up for Sari’s newsletter)

Kirkus Review (starred): “A graceful—and righteously angry—travelogue through a troubled land.

Publisher’s Weekly: “An impassioned account…it adds up to a poignant portrait of life in the Trump era.”

Book Page: “Anthropologist and journalist Sarah Kendzior’s The Last American Road Trip feels like a mashup of William Least Heat-Moon’s bestselling 1982 travelogue, Blue Highways, and National Lampoon’s Vacation. In truth, Kendzior’s memoir combines an elegiac account of her family travels with a frank political and cultural critique of the United States in the first quarter of the 21st century as, she argues, it ‘went from being a flawed democracy to a burgeoning autocracy.’”

Skyblue Overland: “Kendzior’s given us something rare: a portrait of America that’s unflinching yet affectionate, a story of a family holding tight to each other as the miles roll on. I can’t help but think this is the kind of work that sticks with you—like a song you hear on the radio somewhere between St. Louis and nowhere, one you’re still humming long after the signal fades.”

Peculiar Book Club: “We’ll bring the road trip snacks with Sarah Kendzior and the Last American Road Trip”

A rave review from Ms. magazine. This is from the print version, the online version is forthcoming:

There are more and I’ll add them later. Again, thank you everyone! I’ll also be posting updated tour information in Notes, so check that too!

Love,

Sarah

Some of the hundreds of preordered copies I signed at Left Bank Books. Thank you again!

Hope to see you on the road!

Sometimes readers send me gifts through Left Bank Books. This is a piece of 400-million-year-old flint from Ohio shaped like Ohio! Thank you very much, Tim W! I put in my collection of “awesome rocks sent to me by readers” (this is a real thing because you all know me so well)