A Thousand Miles to Graceland, the tender-hearted first novel by Kristen Mei Chase, maps issues of family, friendship and making peace with wherever life takes you. Grace Johnson, an Asian American and native of El Paso, Tex., is now a workaholic accountant in Boston. Grace's world grinds to a halt when she learns that her husband is cheating on her. As the couple heads for divorce, Grace's mother, Loralynn, makes a proposition: to celebrate her 70th birthday, Loralynn--a die-hard Elvis Presley fan--wants Grace to take her on an "epic road trip of a lifetime" to Graceland. Loralynn is a Chinese woman with a "southern accent... who looks like she's been dragged off the stage at the Grand Ole Opry." Mother and daughter have maintained an obligatory, once-a-month phone call-type relationship since Grace left for college 25 years before. However, with Grace's life in a sudden tailspin--and her knowing that "no amount of Xanax" could get Loralynn on a plane and that "the cataract taking over her left eye made it hard for her to do anything outside of daytime hours"--Grace agrees to take a "familial deployment" from her job. She accompanies her mother on a week-long trip from Texas to Tennessee in a rented, antique purple convertible.
This winding adventure--riddled with mishaps and misfits--travels unexpected paths and turns some dark corners. Readers will bask in the eventful story, in which the journey is as important as the destination and mother and daughter ultimately unpack a shared traumatic past and deep-rooted emotional baggage.--Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines