The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty. H/C. 358 pp. 1st 2004 450gm

First edition, published in 2004 by Viking. Dust jacket, cover and inside pages in excellent condition, a book good enough as a gift.

A really lovely story that will make you smile en swallow some big lumps in the throat. Smithy Ide is a loser, overweight, friendless, chain-smoking and drinking way too much. He works at a low-paying job. Then his parents get killed in a car crash and his beloved sister turned up in a morgue. Stunned, Smithy gets on the old Raleigh his dad had bought him as a kid and starts on an epic journey