What happens to an Ivy League grad who’s slated to go to work for his father as a Washington mining lobbyist, only to find his life’s values chipped away by an unrequited love and a growing fascination with spirituality and the environment? Before returning home to greet his father on his deathbed, Jeffrey Woodward hopes to face gnawing fears and figure out what matters in his life by traveling to the Yukon Territory of 1982 with only a backpack, guitar and his thumb. What he discovers on his journey will turn his life upside down and cause him to desperately seek new possibilities in the world. A Long Time Gone is funny, sweet and often tense as Jeffrey’s journey to the Klondike leads him to a First Nation reservation, a gold mine and a succession of wonderful and scary characters who escort him into an alien world. The novel is fully relevant today, addressing everything from racism and the continuing deep divide on environmental issues to the ageless push and pull between parents’ wishes for their children and adult children’s need to find their own path.