What could be more glorious than two friends, an old Dodge Lancer and the highway ahead? So begins the deceptively simple story of 19-year old Daz, a half-Hispanic Californio to whom Spanish is a foreign language, his hapa-Hawaiian friend Alex, and their drive across country to visit a cousin in New York. Theirs is a journey of odd jobs taken, of temptations to violence seized and rejected, of breakdowns and repairs, of self-reliance and sacrifice--"of an American identity being earned, not bestowed.Smith, Charles Hugh is the author of 'I-State Lines', published 2006 under ISBN 9781579621278 and ISBN 1579621279.