“Frank, funny”

When his only son turns 13, a divorced, Jewish, 60-year-old writer buys a used pickup so that father and son can truck together on the open road, bickering and bonding.

Such is the premise of "Truckin' With Sam," a frank, funny, quasi-religious memoir of one graying Boomer's attempt to redefine fatherhood.

While the narrative begins humbly in a Starbucks coffee shop on Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill, it morphs into a buddy picture of epic proportion, from Atlantic City to Monument Valley to the Alaskan frontier and beyond, including the vaulting mountain heights of Tibet. […]

The anecdotes and observations offered up by the Gutkinds are contradictory and fascinating, embarrassing and mundane. – Peter Oresick