Kansas City News Blog

In his chronicle of walking from Kansas City to Helena, Montana, Patrick Dobson proves that in literature, as in life, there's a fine line between cozy and boring.

​The premise of Seldom Seen, Dobson's first book (released in September from the University of Nebraska Press), is promising because it's at once universal and escapist. We've all been -- or known -- the antsy guy who's uninspired by his blue-collar job and knows he's got precious little time to experience something worthwhile. And we've all dreamed of giving up the 9 to 5 and disappearing down a long road bound for who-knows-what.

OK, maybe not everybody dreams of quitting their job, leaving their young daughter and hoofing it across the Great Plains. But that's how Dobson decides to confront a crisis of identity -- and anyone who picks up this book is going to be eager to see what will happen.

But instead of diving into a revelatory travelogue, the reader sinks into overwrought sentiment and encounters a cast of characters that might confirm outsiders' disregard for the fly-over communities Dobson so desperately wants to romanticize.

If you savor descriptions about "sweet western winds" casting thoughts of a prairie "baptism" through your window after a night drifting in "dreams the color of maturing wheat" you'll eat this book up. For the subject matter, though, the elevated diction seems strained. "Bud-filigreed trees scratched against the melancholy dimness of the day," he writes as he's walking on a highway near Bonner Springs. Throughout the book, Dobson tries to be a poet when easy-going prose would serve him better.

Luckily, that doesn't diminish the warmth of the narrative. Dobson is clearly charmed by the expanse of the prairie, often describing in detail the vegetation unfolding in front of him. He relishes the relaxed pace of small towns and the neatly packaged lives and soothing routines of the men and women who inhabit them. And the way country residents open their cars, homes and personal histories to a traveler is both surprising and comforting. Through his experience, Dobson reassures us that, even as Americans spend most of our free time in front of TV screens, we still crave human connection and allow ourselves to reach out to strangers.

But that warm and fuzzy feeling isn't enough to sustain 279 pages. While Dobson takes the trip to explore the possibilities of life outside the mundane trudge of parenting and paying bills, the trip becomes just as mind-numbing. Sure, the characters he meets are salt-of-the-earth folk, but who wants to read about the lady who works at Quik Stop and thinks it's just dandy? Maybe it's asking too much, but where's the excitement, the adventure that makes the journey worth the blisters? Yes, we briefly meet some interesting characters -- the crazy Catholic zealot, the hopeless woman who tries to seduce an unnerved Dobson as payment for crashing on her couch -- but, for the most part, the people Dobson meets are nothing to write home -- or a book -- about.

The only tension here is Dobson's internal conflict. But that, too, gets repetitive. Over and over, he explains to his fleeting acquaintances that he took to the road because he feared that if he didn't walk through his fears of "a mean and unforgiving world" outside his Kansas City bubble, he'd displace his restless resentment on his daughter -- just like his father had done to him. Thankfully, Dobson does resolve, or at least chew to a pulp, that conundrum. He faces his fears and, by the end of the book, is rewarded richly.

His journey across the Great Plains succeeds in revealing the world is still a kind and welcoming place. But if you're going to walk hundreds of miles -- and your self discovery is intended for publication -- there are more interesting roads than this one.