The Long Way Home

Overview

The Long Way Home is a closely observed account of the author's actual 5-week, 500-mile walk from Chicago to Minneapolis and parallel journey through the memories of his traumatic and painful life as a young man. His meetings with people and places along the journey open up the history, culture, and experience of this part of the Midwest in a way that will captivate any interested reader.

Reviews

"The Long Way Home is an authentically and beautifully rendered memoir of the internal trauma that results when adult mentors sexually violate the vulnerable youth who trust them. More importantly, it is the story of what healing is like – a literal and metaphoric journey that ends with wholeness, but a wholeness imbued with a wisdom that comes from stepping into what is most feared. It is not a book about winning over or vanquishing the past – it is a book about accepting that the past can’t be undone, while showing that it can be disarmed and embraced, gingerly, in our own journeys. The Long Way Home is about the potential that comes when we trust our bodies to heal our minds and hearts and is an example of the gifts that come from reflecting deeply and honestly on our experiences of the world around us. Without sentimentality or cliché, The Long Way Home invites us to imagine our own journeys to being at peace with ourselves and with the world as it is." —Keith Morton, Professor of Public and Community Services at Providence College

"The Long Way Home gives new meaning to Emerson's words: “It's not the destination, it's the journey.” As Herwig opens to the land during his quest for that elusive state of being known as home, he opens to memories of childhood, family, and to the histories of all the idiosyncratic people he encounters along the way. His photographic journey transcends time and place in the best possible way, and ultimately leads him right back where he belongs." —Djola Branner Professor of Theater, George Mason University

Author Biography

Tim Herwig is a writer, performer, teacher, and student of literature and the humanities. As a performing artist, he was interested in how a poet or writer transforms an image into metaphor. He imagined a physical space or moment of time between the formation of a metaphor and when a writer or poet writes it on a piece of paper or taps it out on a keyboard. He also worked for many years in the social/economic justice field of community development, for a bank and a federal regulatory agency.