Gone to Look for America - an American Wilderness Odyssey
Gone to Look for America is a lyrical, offbeat exploration of the American spirit—told through stories, songs, and encounters with the wild, the weird, and the quietly profound. From Appalachian trails to desert diners, songwriter Steve Bonham digs beneath the headlines to uncover a country shaped by paradox, invention, and fierce dreams. Part travelogue, part love letter, this is a field guide to the American soul—written in dust, music, memory, and fire.
From the smog-bound streets of postwar Derby to the backroads of Tennessee, the desert silence of New Mexico, and the neon flicker of forgotten motels, Gone to Look for America is a soulful, surprising exploration of a country as wild, wounded, and wondrous as the music it inspired.
Steve Bonham’s lifelong fascination with America began with a black-and-white TV and a witch named Samantha. What followed was decades of wandering: by bus, by car, by campervan—and most meaningfully, on foot. This is not a single road trip, but a long, evolving quest to find the secret America behind the headlines and the hype: the land of moonshine and myth, bikers and bartenders, backwoods philosophers and beat-up dreamers.
In a series of vivid, lyrical essays, Bonham uncovers the stories and spirit behind America’s songwriters, wilderness trails, outlaw legends, roadside prophets, and towns where the weird and the wonderful walk hand in hand. It's a portrait of a country powered by paradox—where invention springs from need, where freedom walks a fine line, and where failure is just another part of becoming.
This isn’t a guidebook. It’s a field guide to the American soul—written in dust, music, memory, and fire. What emerges is a portrait of a country still reckoning with its contradictions, and a traveller shaped—and shaken—by the journey.