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Spencerport resident’s novel takes readers on a hitchhiking adventure

Spencerport resident and retired librarian Michael McCullough’s first novel, Life in Motion, takes readers back to growing up in Brockport and deciding at age nineteen to join a friend and hitchhike across the United States and Canada. The novel is loosely based on the author’s own experiences.

It was 1976, and Sean Matheson was lost in life, love, college, work, and sports when on a drunken night, he decided to join his friend Paul Davis on an adventure of a lifetime. They were hoping for kindness from strangers to get them from upstate New York to the California coast, up north to the Trans-Canada Highway, and back home. It was a time without smartphones, social media, and GPS. A time when people seemed kinder and more helpful. 

Each time they got into a car, truck, or van Sean was a mix of emotions; there was an adrenaline rush that was difficult to ignore, but who were these people? Could they be trusted?  

Sleeping in the grass next to Interstates or on top of picnic tables, hiking in the mountains of Yellowstone and Mt. Rainier National Parks, speeding through the desert, camping at Big Sur, making decisions about people on the fly, Sean was in a constant state of inner turmoil, wonder, and the anxiety of dealing with an ever-changing environment. 

McCullough’s book can be ordered from Lift Bridge Book Shop and is available at the Seymour Library in Brockport and the Monroe Community College Library. 

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