Books have this wonderful ability to transport us—to another time, another place, and another way of life. These stories speak to our empathy. That essential quality that stirs us to care, to relate, and to act.   

We teamed up with our friends at Powell’s Books in Portland, the largest independent bookstore in the world, to get their picks on the best books for road trips. 

We highlight tales of adventure, exploration, travel, nature, and of course, road trips—from diverse authors whose lives have been touched by unique experiences rooted in a sense of place.

Self-discovery is such a fundamental piece of road trips. These books offer up intimate, absorbing, and powerful journeys that will leave you inspired long after you finish flipping the pages.    

Love Is an Ex-Country

by Randa Jarrar

This road trip memoir is bursting with intersectionality. Jarrar explores the overlap of race, gender, sexuality, identity, religion, and more while driving from California to Connecticut. It's all at once funny, sincere, and inspiring! 

— Carrie K.

The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

The Great Offshore Grounds is the great American novel turned on its head. I was lost in the pleasure of the language, the characters, and their real but transformative journeys. This book is why I read. 

— Doug C.

Days of Distraction: A Novel

by Alexandra Chang

Under-appreciated at work and a little bit antsy, Alexandra Chang’s protagonist moves across the country with her white boyfriend while he starts grad school. Author Catherine Chung may have summed this up best: “Days of Distraction is the kind of book so alive with intelligence, humor, and attention that it made me feel more awake to the world just to read it.” This is a nearly perfect coming-of-age novel, with particular resonance on exploring race and relationships, and digging into your past to build your future. 

— Michelle C.

Are You Listening?

by Tillie Walden

This friendship + road trip graphic novel is full of sorrow and hope and magical realism. It's a beautiful depiction of vulnerability and what it means to share your heart with someone else.

— Carrie K.

Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

Davidson speaks to my soggy, PNW-born soul. The clarity and empathy with which she writes about a coastal Pacific Northwest logging town and its working-class residents left me feeling as though I had inhabited the world she created. Damnation Spring is a spectacular debut that will take a well-earned place in the pantheon of PNW and environmental classics and the perfect book to read on a coastal road trip. 

— Emily B.

Outlawed

by Anna North

An improbably compelling fusion of bank robbery and women’s reproductive health, Anna North’s alternative western, Outlawed, explores how one woman copes with being ostracized for her infertility. Ada’s observant, wry voice and North’s propulsive plot make Outlawed easy to start and very difficult to put down! 

— Rhianna W.

Erosion: Essays of Undoing

by Terry Tempest Williams

Activist, author, and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams is as vital as the wildernesses she so magnificently writes about (whether on a map or located within). In Erosion: Essays of Undoing, Williams balances empathy and outrage, anger and forgiveness, beauty and loss, hope and despair, thinking and feeling, knowledge and action. Erosion is simultaneously a salvo and salve for our disquieting Anthropocenic age. 

— Jeremy G.

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

by Suleika Jaouad

Part cancer memoir, part road trip memoir, Suleika's story is captivating and funny and so full of heart. It's really beautifully written and offers some great perspective and inspiration. 

— Carrie K. 

The Lincoln Highway

by Amor Towles

This one isn't out until October, but a new Towles novel is always worth anticipating. The Lincoln Highway is an epic adventure, charting a road trip in the 1950s as Emmett, newly released from a work camp, his younger brother, and two stowaways travel from New York City to San Francisco. Like all of his novels, this one promises to be masterful and deeply engrossing. 

— Emily B.

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States

by Samantha Allen

Samantha Allen traveled thousands of miles looking for thriving queer individuals and communities in America’s most conservative states. She found them. And in telling their stories and her own, she overturns many of the narratives held by those of us in coastal cities. 

— Keith M.