Ron McLarty
Stephen King was right when he said “Ron McLarty’s The Memory of Running is the best novel you won’t read this year… It’s bighearted and as satisfying as one of your mom’s home-cooked Sunday dinners.” This novel was exactly that: bighearted, satisfying, warm, and comforting, all at once. When you meet Smithson Ide, he’s in his 40’s and weighs nearly 300 pounds. He drinks, smokes, doesn’t have friends, and has just lost his parents to a car accident. It’s after this loss that he discovers his old Raleigh bicycle in the garage. He decides to make a cross-country trip to find his lost and mentally unstable sister, Bethany. Beginning in his home state of Rhode Island, and biking all the way to California, Smithy meets both good and bad people, and begins to learn what life is really about.