Last Bus to Coffeeville

World Book Night 2016 title
Longlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award

Nancy Skidmore has Alzheimer’s and her oldest friend Eugene Chaney III once more a purpose in life – to end hers.

When the moment for Gene to take Nancy to her desired death in Coffeeville arrives, she is unexpectedly admitted to the secure unit of a nursing home and he has to call upon his two remaining friends to help break her out: one his godson, a disgraced weatherman in the throes of a midlife crisis, and the other an ex-army marksman officially dead for forty years.

On a tour bus once stolen from Paul McCartney, and joined by a young orphan boy searching for lost family, the band of misfits career towards Mississippi through a landscape of war, euthanasia, communism, religion and racism, and along the way discover the true meaning of love, family and – most important of all – friendship.

Charming, uplifting and profoundly moving, Last Bus to Coffeeville is a chronicle of lives that have jumped the tracks; a tale of endings and new beginnings; a funny story about sad things.

‘A fascinating and poignant novel’ Zarina de Ruiter, Woman’s World

• For fans of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
• A touching, hilarious road story populated with disparate and colourful characters with equally unusual back stories
• Set against a backdrop of key events in recent American history including the Jim Crow laws, the Vietnam War and American diplomatic relations with Cuba
• Addresses the subject of dementia and euthanasia, making them accessible to the reader without trivialising them