Passing Through: An Existential Journey Across America's Outback - Travel Memoir & Adventure Book for Road Trips, Soul Searching & Exploring Remote Landscapes

If you spend enough time in the desert, you're bound to come across some strange folk. Since the 1970s, Richard Menzies has been traveling the Great Basin Desert and meeting the region's quirky characters. As a collection of vignettes, this book features Menzies' more colorful eccentrics. In essence, this is a book about desert rats that's by a desert rat. Most of the people were met along Interstate 80 in either Utah or Nevada. There's Deputy Dump, Chief Thunder and electricity genius Robert Golka. The book tells mini-biographies of a whole band of other misfits, religious pilgrims, bakers and hitchhikers. One of the vignettes features Melvin Dummar. Dummar's life is well-documented in print and on the silver screen as he once rescued Howard Hughes from the perils of the desert. Richard Menzies is a highly entertaining wordsmith. Most of these vignettes tell the story of flawed people. While simultaneously affirming his subjects' humanity, Menzies has a distinctively dry humor. The author employs his wit and irony with great effectiveness. The production of the book is noteworthy. The author's black and white photography helps to graphically tell the story. "Passing Through" makes a strong impression and this can be credited to designer Sue Campbell. As a coffee table book, "Passing Through" is physically large, which increases the overall impact. The graphic format (colors, layouts, fonts) makes the actual book as unusual as the stories contained within. Indeed, it's hard to imagine how this book would have been different had the publisher decided to release it in the format of a paperback novel. As is, this is an enjoyable and engaging read. A word about the subtitle is deserved. "An Existential Journey Across America's Outback" suggests that the book will have some philosophical treatise. There is no deep philosophical statement or intersection with existentialism as a school. This is a collection of stories about oddballs. Yes, Menzies is reflective, intellectual and poetic but the subtitle is an exaggeration. In the end, this is very forgivable given this book's outstanding assets. "Passing Through: An Existential Journey Across America's Outback" is a personal and entertaining look at what could be described as the desert rat phenomenon.