Magnetic North
In Magnetic North an aging warrior and his best friend—perhaps his only friend—ride motorcycles to Alaska, with the ultimate goal of riding to the Arctic Circle. It is a ride that mirrors their lives, a ride that causes old stories, old trials, old darkness to come, once again, through the spinning wheels of the machines they are riding.
Morgan is a man who can't give it up. His propensity toward violence has followed him through all the days of his life, and it follows him now.
Slade has shared much of Morgan's life, and he has been the one of the rare stabilizing factors in that life. Without Slade, it is clear that Morgan has no guidance, no goals, and no potential for living much longer than his next encounter with . . . almost anything.
And so the two old friends ride out from New Mexico and Colorado—heading north.
It is part action-adventure novel, part off-road motorcycling memoir, part philosophical meditation about the nature of danger and courage, about love, both lost and found, about friendship & trust, about aging and death, about the pure pleasure of revenge. This is a spooky, beautiful dream of a novel.'
Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale and Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-Earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life
Once 'on the road,' Maynard's characters make us want to follow them as far North as their endurance will take us.'
Gary Fincke, author of The Proper Words for Sin and A Room of Rain
It is a rollicking contemporary picaresque—a tale of friendship and adventure and a personal quest for meaning. If Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had been written by Edward Abbey, it would be Lee Maynard’s Magnetic North.'
Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water
Lee Maynard was born and raised deep in the mountains of West Virginia, a location that drives the emotion and grit of most of his writing. He says he had never had a “career.” Rather, he sought out “day jobs” while doing his real job—writing. Among several other things, he has been a criminal investigator, college president, and COO of a national experiential education organization. He now lives and writes at the edge of an Indian reservation in the high desert of New Mexico. He is the author of The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life and theCrum trilogy: Crum, Screaming with the Cannibals, and The Scummers.
