New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first (and so far only) novel - in which she "pays homage to her spiritual mentor Jack Kerouac, whose celebrations of the open road provide a model for Bakers own shaggy search for America. [She] fuels her fictional travelogue with plain-speaking and narrative vigor. Twenty-three and carefree, Brenda wants to visit the possible 'love of her life' in Spokane. But her trip from San Diego to Washington State veers east to Arizona, then north as far as Seattle, back to S. Cal., east to Boston, back west to Reno, and then, Finally, to Spokane, where she's a month or so too late. Along the way, Brenda earns money working construction, placing bets at the race track for her brother, picking apples, and hauling poinsettias from San Francisco to Seattle.. . The one constant in Brenda's itinerant life in her brother Will, a Vietnam vet haunted by the death of his best friend. And even though Brenda doesn't find true love by the end of the novel, it seems Will has, giving her sufficient peace of mind to pick up her backpack and hit the road again. An exuberant debut that rolls along on charm and a distinct lack of pretension." (Kirkus) 241 pp. ISBN: 0-394579127.