THE 10

Sometimes sparkling, sometimes somber narrative of a sojourn along America’s southernmost interstate highway.

Hanks is the daughter of actor Tom and his first wife, Susan Dillingham, who divorced when their daughter was 5, after which they split custody, he in Hollywood and she in Sacramento. There Susan descended into mental illness, but pulled herself together long enough to take her daughter to Florida along “the 10,” L.A.-speak for Interstate 10, “in a Winnebago that lumbered along the asphalt with a rolling gait that felt nautical, as if we were crossing oceans instead of the vast expanses of the South.” Twenty-odd years after her mother’s death, Hanks borrowed a van from her father that he called the “Shit Box” to do the trip again, solo save for a brief spell with a rescued pit bull that she had to surrender in one of the most touching moments of this heartfelt, yearning narrative. Her first stop is in Phoenix, where she speaks with young locals. “Nearly every one makes some mention of how much they like that Phoenix is not cool,” she says. The vastness of the desert across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas offers a striking contrast to the make-believe Disneyland world she adores: “When you grow up with the beloved, fake version of something, seeing the real deal can be a bit of a shock.” Each stop along the way from L.A. to Florida brings a history lesson (usually grim, with murder, lynching, and death among the themes, as well as a few grisly stats on the carnage wrought by semitrucks in highway accidents) and personal revelations, often grim themselves, but always with an element of self-discovery. Her galloping return trip closes on a poetic note: “Getting off the 10 feels like stepping down from a long watch through a dark, if starlit night.”

A lively, lovely take on an old standby, the road trip as a journey within.