Prologue

When Jim Mellon, a simple man, loses his young wife to illness, he is nearly paralyzed with grief and decides to rebuild an old motorcycle that had been his father’s before falling into rust and decay. As he builds, he sees the parallel of needing to rebuild his own life. Complete and ready to ride, Jim decides to ride across the United States through each of the lower forty-eight states to his sister’s home in San Diego. He plans to leave some of his late wife’s ashes in each state.

His first stop in New England is to see Lauren, his former sister-in-law, a woman who looks nearly identical to his late wife. The two fall into a complex relationship. She predicts that on his cross-country journey he will enjoy many adventures and have various sexual relationships as he reconstructs his life. Jim is skeptical, but soon after leaving, he realizes how prophetic Lauren has been. He saves a man from a fire, rescues some children, and stops a gang rape, but not before serious injury that slows down his trip.

Into his trip, Jim meets Kim, a married woman in an open relationship, and falls in love. Kim helps transform Jim, particularly in how he relates to women. Later, Jim stops to help a stranded bus and meets Crystal Lee, America’s country music diva of the day. Having fallen for Kim, he also falls in love with Crystal, and in the process, comes to see new dimensions of love that had been missing in his own life. With Crystal’s mentoring; Jim starts a career in country music that suddenly catapults him to fame.

Jim continues to have his inner demons, at first, what he realizes about his past life versus what he is discovering about his new self, but as his travels continue, he slowly shifts to being more open, more experimental, sharing of himself, and loving. He also learns some things about his late wife he finds unsettling. As Jim rebuilds his life, he finds his new life quite different from his old one.