Free Air

by Sinclair Lewis

Free Air (1919) was one of the first novels about an automobile-powered road trip across the United States, decades before Jack Kerouac's On the Road, dependable vehicles, and interstate highways. It offers fascinating accounts of America's little traveled, scenic byways, from Great Cloud, Minnesota to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in Wyoming to Snoqualmie Pass, Washington. It even features a class in engineering and omelettes (Chapter XXVII) and tooth-mug tea (Chapter XXXIII).
[Featured photo of Alice Huyler Ramsey and her auto with a 1908 license plate.]

You may also enjoy another early car-trip adventure, Edith Wharton's A Motor-Flight Through France (1908).

I - Miss Boltwood of Brooklyn Is Lost in the Mud

II - Claire Escapes From Respectability

III - A Young Man in a Raincoat

IV - A Room Without

V - Release Brake, Shift to Third

VI - The Land of Billowing Clouds

VII - The Great American Frying Pan

VIII - The Discovery of Canned Shrimps and Hesperides

IX - The Man With Agate Eyes

X - The Curious Incident of the Unexpected Road

XI - Sagebrush Tourists of the Great Highway