"In Nikki Ervice’s brilliant debut, a kaleidoscopic array of landscapes and characters come vividly alive as Annie road-trips across the United States and Canada, toward her past and her future. Ervice is a bold and sensitive writer, and Roadshow is a propulsive, visceral book—I couldn’t put it down." —Helen Phillips, author of Hum and The Need
“Nikki Ervice redefines the Western in this riveting, atmospheric, unsentimental, and defiantly hopeful debut.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award Winner of The Rabbit Hutch
Sweetbitter meets Nomadland, we follow Annie as she leaves her NYC life of bartending and dancing to drive cross-country to Alaska to meet her dying mother.
Annie is burning out. She performs at Club X as Dog-Faced Girl, a burlesque act in which she hides her face behind a dog mask. It’s the only way she can dance—her greatest love—while making enough money for rent. But when she receives an unexpected letter from her estranged mother, Vera, postmarked from the remote island in rural Alaska where Annie grew up, her world stops.
Annie’s mother abandoned her when she was only a few days old. Her father, a stoic, workaholic aluminum welder and fisherman, insisted on keeping her mother’s identity a secret. But now, on her deathbed, Vera wants to meet Annie. And with her father recently passed, Annie knows it’s time to return home. So she borrows a Buick LeSabre and sets out on an exhausting journey through the Midwest into Canada. On the road, Annie sleeps where she can. Her attempts at stripping are unsuccessful and humiliating. Her money dwindles. She begins to steal gas. For a thousand dollars she agrees to dance for a bachelor party at a private lodge on a remote lake. After a delirious, dangerous night that she barely survives, she finally crosses the border into Alaska. Not long after, the LeSabre gives out. Half-broken but drawn on inexorably by the threat of Vera’s death, and a visceral call of her homeland, Annie abandons the LeSabre and hitchhikes to the end of the highway system, across the bay, to the island of her birth, where Vera awaits.
Sexy and fast-paced yet deeply felt, Roadshow explores the power of passion, inheritance, legacy, and class, and the grueling, smiling work of the stage and the hospitality industry.
