Rock drummer, Neil Peart, deals with loss on a 55,000 mile motorcycle journey.

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Product Description

In less than a year, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie. Faced with overwhelming sadness and isolated from the world in his home on the lake, Peart was left without direction. This memoir tells of the sense of loss and directionlessness that led him on a 55,000-mile journey by motorcycle across much of North America, down through Mexico to Belize, and back again. He had needed to get away, but had not really needed a destination. His travel adventures chronicle his personal odyssey and include stories of reuniting with friends and family, grieving, thinking, and reminiscing as he rode until he encountered the miracle that allowed him to find peace.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6325 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
"Peart’s story reminded me of Theodore Roosevelt’s travel West to overcome the sorrow of losing his wife and mother..." -- Mike Fink, CNN Headline News

About the Author
Neil Peart is the drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush and the author of Masked Rider. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

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Customer Reviews

How odd with the bad reviews, though it is a brilliant book
This is well-written and comes from the heart. I am a RUSH fan(atic) so of course I wanted to read this book. At first I read all of the reviews on this page - mostly the bad ones was interesting. Yes, he is after the American people all right. And after these reviews I realize he is right. What small-minded people... "Oh he doesn't like us but we have made his fortune - he should be greatful". I am not an American and now I pretty much take Neil's side when it comes to the critisism of the people. I would not be very fond of people who were so arrogant to think that they were responsible for all of my talent and fortune either.

Funny to see that all of the bad reviews comes from offended American people who can't take critisism. Well, it is okay to kill people in the name of Godd too, isn't it? Jesus Crist...

Anyway, I really did like this book. It is right that it gets some how boring at some points (it is self biographical - what can you expect?) but it is well-written. I really admire that he seems to make everything important and tries not to take anything for granted (family, friends, a good meal, the trees etc.) and if you can get over your self-rightous, arrogant, and offended mind you will see that the man's got a point. Musicians can't lie on their knees for fans and be begging and thankful all of the time. Fans can be a pain in the butt sometimes. Like friends can be the same.

Read the book as an experience - and stop being offended and so bloody patriotic about everything.

Travels On The Boring Road
Neil reveals a lot about himself which I don't think he intended to do in this book. He comes off as being an elitist in a lot of ways. He almost seems like he wants to be Hemingway, with his drinking, smoking and just doing his own crazy travels with little regards for anything else. I think his digs into America were very revealing too about himself. Yet, he doesn't seem to have a problem with his best friend being a drug dealer; or that he was never officially married to Jackie (common law wife of 22 years); then jumps into a relationship and marriage fairly quickly to Carrie; that he breaks speeding law constantly on his BMW bike and that he is only self consumed with himself and no one else outside his little small bubble of friends/family.

I love Rush and I think Neil is awesome at his craft, but I'm not jumping on board with everything he does or puts out. This book took me forever to read because it was really boring at times with his letters to Brutus and his ramblings of his travels which were very dry and repetitive. This is not a self help book for someone who has had a similar tragedy in their life. This book could have been cut down to a fourth of the pages written and accomplished the same thing and kept me interested.

The only thing I really got out of this book was that it probably takes longer for you to get on with your life when you have an unlimited bank account to be able to stop working. In Neil's case, it allowed him to travel all over North America on his BMW bike and spend the winter months walking on snow shoes around the lake at his house in Quebec. I believe all this free time allowed him to think more and more about things and feel sorry for himself. I think the average "fat" American, which he ran into on his travels, would probably have to go to work shortly after this type of tragedy and not be able to take two years off. Not that getting over this would be easy for anyone, but I think being forced into the work environment would eventually allow distractions in your life to stop you from thinking 24/7 about the tragedies. Neil didn't have this type of distraction and traveling alone only allowed him to dwell more and more on the tragedies in his.

I by no means am putting Neil down for what he had to deal with, but I am critical of the dribble he put into this book. I don't think if you are not a hardcore Rush fan or a friend/acquaintance of Neil's you would get much out of this book. I think a lot of the praise this book gets is because it's "Neil Peart" and the tragedy he had to deal with and not because this is a particularly good book.

Fragmented, Poor Editing, but Contains Many Jems
As a faithful fan of the Canadian rock-trio Rush since 1976, I had read about the heart breaking double tragedy in drummer Neil Peart's personal life: first the death of his daughter in a car accident, followed by that of his wife to cancer eight months later. Driving home from a recent Rush concert, I felt it was time to delve into Peart's writings, beginning appropriately with _Ghost Rider: Travels of the Healing Road_.

Constantly surrounded at home by memories of his beloved wife and daughter, while consumed in his misery, loss and anguish, Peart, an empty shell of a man with no will to continue living realized he would die from the ravages of depression, if he did not keep moving "Book One" recounts Peart's motorcycle journey of healing through some of North America's most remote, rugged and majestically beautiful National Parks. Like many of his literary heroes, Peart set off with a writer's eye and journal in hand. When not riding, Peart hiked forest trails, rowed on mountain lakes, anything to keep moving. Peart finds wonder in nature, its beauty, and is a knowledgeable bird watcher. Along the way, he investigates local used book stores, museums and the stomping grounds of some his favorite American authors. Peart often digresses and recounts the history of a little known piece of Americana and the people who laid claim to a piece of it.

Although a self-professed "saddle tramp," Peart eats at the top of the food chain, and his efforts to satisfy his Champaign tastes (described in minute detail) on beer menus is sometimes comical. It soon becomes apparent that, despite his grieving heart, Peart is a loner, by nature, comfortable in his solitude. Yet, Peart the loner battles loneliness, especially at meal times or in crowded familial settings. Happy to sit alone in a darkened corner, he eats and vents to his journal about overweight tourists with "mullet" hair cuts, name tag wearing conventioneers, or "Califoricators." When he goes as far as to label people "low lifes," however, Mr. Peart apparently has forgotten that this social strata could easily buy Rush CDs and concert tickets too. Always polite (after all Peart is Canadian), he does not warm up to people easily, nor does he choose friends readily. When he does form friendships, they tend to be lifelong: his band mates, his wife's relations, and his best friend and riding pal Brutus. After hearing that Brutus was incarcerated for illegal dealings in medicinal-herbal trade, Peart discovers a renewed purpose in the form of describing it through letters to Brutus in jail.

"Book Two" finds Peart in a winter hiatus at home, after a brief but unsuccessful relationship with a woman in California. Here, motorcycle treks are replaced by snowshoes and cross-country skies as Peart re-explores his snow covered winter soulscape, and intimates the process of his healing through more letters to colleagues and friends. Although at times repetitive, Peart's letters are often more personal and revealing; less formal, and more soul bearing than his narrative. Skimming over these letters, one risks missing some of Peart's most insightful self-analysis. Yet, several of the letters to Brutus containing nothing more than adolescent banter and coded insider jokes certainly should have been chopped.

It is said that wisdom is attained through pain. Neil Peart, through grief, and in spite of himself, has gained a wisdom some of us may never hope to grasp. The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote: "Know yourself, then know others, and you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles." Peart not only possesses the self-honesty to know himself, his human foibles, and character defects, but also came to identify the ghosts and demons that taunt a grieving soul on a daily basis. The more tangible aspects of the book contain a few flaws, though.

Travel narratives offer unique challenges to a writer. Anyone who has attempted to put pen to paper soon realizes that everything surrounding them is called something. Peart's numerous descriptions of flora and fauna, and efforts to research afford the reader the joy of watching a writer in the process of developing his craft. Redundancy is another challenge. Keeping thousands of miles of roads, highways, rivers, valleys, mountains, forests, and Best Western Hotels fresh on every page is a daunting task indeed. The combination of Peart's narrative, journal entries, and too many letters to Brutus, needless to say, created overlap that unfortunately escaped an editor's keen eye. It seems Peart is enamored with the Shift-I keys. Peart's more than generous sprinkling of italicized words, is quite distracting. After a few hundred pages, Peart's final chapters and epilog take a steep nose dive. One can almost hear Peart's publisher saying, "I need that manuscript tomorrow!"

Though bound handsomely the book contains some needless flair. Each new chapter shows an artsy black and white photograph of Peart's riderless BMW motorcycle, pointed down a different stretch of scenic, yet lonely North American highway. Peart hints at having taken hundreds of photos on his journey, yet not one (other than the chapter photos mentioned above) appears in the book. A photo section offering views into Peart's family life before, and during his healing journey would have been a joy. Likewise, Journal passages headed with a facsimile of Peart's handwriting, only offers more needless attempts at flair. For map lovers, the absence of a simple rudimentary map outlining Peart's route will surely disappoint.

At the risk of appearing fragmented, this book offers much to a varied audience. Lack of smoother flow and tighter ending is perhaps more the fault of a keen editor than the author's. Yet the joy of watching Neil Peart grow both emotionally and literally makes Ghosts a must read, whether you are a Rush fan or not.