The One True Story of the World

At thirty-four, Jesse Walker believes she knows the difference between running away and moving on. Strong-willed, independent, and mortally confused, she has a talent for leaving that she shares with her father who sailed off into the sunset when she was ten. She comes home one day from a soul-selling job writing obituaries for the New England Tribune, says goodbye to her ambivalent married lover, calls the landlady to say she can keep the deposit and the furniture, and finds herself heading west on Interstate 90 when the only direction she has in mind is long gone. 'The One True Story of the World'- that's what he called it: the story her father told her every night when she was a child. Now she's telling the story herself, only she's not sure how it ends. her licence plate reads 'Live Free or Die'. After a Mack truck destroys her car, she walkes out of the hospital in a standard-issue white gown, bruised and battered, but alive. There by the side of the highway she meets an unlikely man who makes the middle of nowhere look like a place to stay for ever. but when their stories no longer agree, Jesse abandons his car by the side of the road and buys a bus ticket to California, where she finds herself deep in the certainty of a time as bad as it can be. With her confidence and equilibrium gone, she goes home to her mother's house to face the true story of her father's leavetaking.--Inside cover.