by Andrew Hedglin

I can already tell one of my deep regrets during my time here at Lemuria will be that I was not here when Finn Murphy came last October to promote his trucker memoir, The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tale of Life of the Road. He brought a rig with a custom decorative wrap on the trailer. It looked awesome. Alas, I was visiting my brother in Nashville at the time.

While I was preparing to take a road trip this summer and visit my other brother in Indianapolis, I unboxed Norton’s new releases only to find The Long Haul had just come out in paperback this June. I bought a copy to read on the road.

Murphy is not interesting in further mythologizing the trucker as seen in popular culture–your Smokey and the Bandit,  your “Convoy.” He acknowledges that many other truckers are influenced by it, but he paints himself as both in and outside what brotherhood does exist.

It turns out that within trucking, Murphy explains, as with any other profession, there exists a myriad of castes and specialties to which a trucker can ascribe. While freight haulers dominate the popular imagination, Murphy establishes himself as a long-distance mover–and these days, one usually contracted to help VIP clients for big bucks.

This gives Murphy an unexpected vantage point: he certainly illuminates his world on the highway; I could see into the cabs of trucks from the Greyhound bus I was riding. Cummins, a diesel engine manufacturer whose existence I had spent decades being oblivious of, had a headquarters in Indianapolis that I noticed immediately upon arrival.

But here’s the funny thing: Murphy not only shows us his world, but shows us our world in a mirror. He drives through countless American towns decimated by sprawl and globalization, enters our homes for moving assignments, weary from materialism and impermanence. He ruminates on the economy and race. What makes this trucking tale so fascinating ultimately is its access to so many entrances and intersections into our larger culture.

This is not to say Murphy has written a philosophy book. It is first and foremost a story. Occasionally (literally) unbelievable, often uproarious (the piano story had me cackling), and filled with distinct and intriguing personas and characters, The Long Haul is the perfect book to read this summer when you’ve decided you need to get away for a while.

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