Ghost Rider Travels On The Healing Road

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At the tender age of sixteen I was introduced to a band called Rush. The Canadian trio filled my ears as well as my soul and to this day Rush still rocks my world. Unfortunately, after the tour to help their album, Test for Echo, ended on July 4, 1997, the band disappeared. Rumors disseminate that one of the trio had cancer while others heard they merely broke up.

In 2002 the comprehensible statement in regards to the band’s hiatus was at last revealed to the world and the truth was exposed. Neil Peart, Rush’s King of Kings drummers, lost his nineteen-year-old daughter to a car accident on August 10, 1997 and his common-law wife went into a deep depression and passed away of cancer ten months later.

So, on a rainy, late summer morning on August 20, 1998, just two months after his wife’s funeral, without any reason to carry on and having no interests in his work or his life, the drummer of drummers secured his home, revved up his BMW R1100GS motorcycle and rode down the driveway of what applied to be a happy home. He didn’t recognise where he was going, but he would let his bike lead the way.

For fourteen months, Neil ventured 55,000 miles of highways and byways from eastern Canada to the American west coast and Mexico. All the while, keeping a diary of everything he experienced.

When he at last placed the kickstand down on his bike in early autumn of 1999, he begun piecing together the notes from his diary and titled the book to describe how he felt when it comes to himself. Thus, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road was born.

This book will warm the hearts of Neil’s long-time fans as well as any individual who wants to read a sad, yet uplifting story. While Neil details out the events of his travel, he sprinkles in the memories of his once-happy life. By the time you finish the book, the entire picture is before you-and you understand.

Neil divides his piece into two books: Book One is titled Riding the Healing Road, which specifically records each rain drop and winding turn he experiences on his journey. Book Two Homeward Angel, On The Fly is peppered with his reflectiveness and his determination to look and move forward.

The author brings humor and intimacies into the book and allows the reader to watch the dissection of his spirit, his mind, heart, and his “little baby soul.” Neil introduces us to his best friend, Brutus, and his change ego, Ellwood, which is genuinely his middle name. We likewise become acquainted with Carrie Nuttall, the woman who was “… the answer to a prayer I hadn’t dared to voice, or even dream” and on September 9, 2000 became his wife.

The only feeling of annoyance at being hindered or criticized I had with the book is the amount of unnecessary detail to ad nauseam. I found myself a heap of times in feeling of annoyance at being hindered or criticized screaming “GET ON WITH IT” and would rifle through pages of description-overkill of a rock or how the wine tasted on his tongue.

Many words the author uses such as nadir, majordomo, euphoniously, gelid, and vicissitudes were so unfamiliar to me that I found myself looking to Webster for clarification. The extremity of pointless detail became so exhausting that it took me rather a while to get through the book. I found his writing style arrogant and vain.

I’ve labeled Neil a narcissistic wordsmith as I now realize how much he loves his words. It is very clear to me after reading this book and listening to his lyrics for the past thirty years that he wants his readers and listeners to recognise just how much he loves his words and how well he may put a plethora of elaborated words together to invoke a simple meaning.

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, even though discouraging and hindering and on occasion exhausting, is a must read for any Rush fan, rocker, or those who like a elaborated read with a good ending. Delightful and fun, yet heartbreaking, this book will not only give you a new outlook on life, but will motivate you to buy a motorcycle and “Take off to the Great White North.”

Ghost Rider Travels On The Healing Road

In less than a year, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie. Faced with overpowering sadness and detached from the world in his home on the lake, Peart was left without direction. This essay tells of the sense of loss and directionlessness that led him on a 55,000-mile journeying by motorcycle all over much of North America, down through Mexico to Belize, and back again. He had necessitated to get away, but had not actually necessitated a destination. His travel adventures chronicle his personal odyssey and include stories of reuniting with friends and family, grieving, thinking, and reminiscing as he rode until he encountered the miracle that permitted him to find peace.

Review”Peart’s story reminded me of Theodore Roosevelt’s travel West to get over the sorrow of losing his wife and mother…” — Mike Fink, CNN Headline News

About the AuthorNeil Peart is the drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush and the author of Masked Rider. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Most helpful customer reviews

106 of 112 people found the following review helpful.
A meaningful step in my own recovery
By K. Shanklin
I find it interesting and sad how many people read this book looking for a story and insight about RUSH. I personally was deeply saddened after the Test for Echo tour to have heard about Neil’s tragic losses, then just recently in December of 2002, a week before Christmas, I lost my 32 year old wife to cancer, and immediately have been thrust into a fraternity that nobody should have to join.

A friend was kind enough to give me the book as a gift, and what a profound gift it was. As a lifelong fan of RUSH, Neil, and being a drummer myself, I took that book everywhere with me…it almost became my security. On planes, in my car, etc…until I finally forced myself to read the book closely.

I feel much closer to Neil and certainly identify with his emotions, his feelings of anger, frustration, self-loathing, his “little baby soul” and everything else. Sure, the book delves too deep into certain things that may come across as “WHO CARES” to the reader, but that’s the way grief is. You try to fill as much time with WHO CARES so you don’t just sit around and cry and be miserable. I know, because I’m there RIGHT NOW.

At this point, I’m almost feeling an additional loss from having finished the book. I agree that there was unfinished business in this book, but I can’t help but feel happy for the guy for getting to the point of moving on. That was bittersweet reading for me and quite hard.

Thanks Neil, for sharing your moving story, and making this reader feel and understand your pain, and through that process, anticipate and justify the feelings that I currently am going through. Well done.

102 of 116 people found the following review helpful.
The story of a man determined to save his own life.
By Mary J. Alderdice
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being a long-time Rush fan, which by extension makes me a long-time fan of Neil Peart, the author of this work and drummer and lyricist for Rush. I had been aware of the tragedies that he and his family had experienced, and knew that it was the reason behind the several-year gap between albums (Test for Echo released in 1996. Rush’s next album, Vapor Trails, would not release until 2002.). However, I didn’t know the story of what brought Neil back to Rush, and thus Rush back to the world until I picked up this book at a concert in July of 2002.

When Neil Peart lost his daughter to a traffic accident in the fall of 1997, and his wife to cancer (though, really, he knew it was a broken heart that took his wife), he was an empty man, a man with no reason to live, and little desire to do so. To save himself from the loneliness and the emptiness of a life alone, Peart took to the roads on his motorcycle on a journey that would cover Canada, much of the western United States, and parts of Central America. As he wrote:

“My little baby soul was not a happy infant, of course, with much to complain about, but as every parent learns, a restless baby often calms down if you take it for a ride. I had learned my squalling spirit could be soothed the same way, by motion, and so I had decided to set off on this journey into the unknown. Take my little baby soul for a ride.”

This book is a compelling combination of travelogue, literary journal, sarcastic wit, and honest soul- searching. It provides a number of insights to a complex and intriguing man, one who would be interesting even without his fame. His humor, his pain, his reflections, his irritation, his impatience, his fear… All of it presented for the world to see, and to learn from.

I recommend this book not only to Rush fans, but to anyone interested in seeing how someone survives the losses Peart experienced and emerges a whole person on the other side.

44 of 50 people found the following review helpful.
A decent but unfinished book
By Ryan Mcmahon
I recently picked up a copy of this book at a Rush concert. Partly, I was curious to see how well Neil could do as an author. Partly there was a karma connection: I lost my brother to cancer about ten years ago, and had gotten through it with the help of Rush’s music, so I wanted to know how such a painful loss affected the man who wrote the lyrics to “Bravado”.

Not surprisingly, Peart’s writing on the page-to-page level is witty, literate, and frank. As a travelogue, Ghost Rider is fairly interesting, peppered with details about the various locales he visits and the people who put them on the map, and pithy observations about the local culture. I’m sure he’d do well as a writer at a travel magazine (but being in a successful rock band probably pays better).

As an account of an emotional journey, though, Ghost Rider feels like a journal that was transfered into book form without benefit of a good editing job. It seems like I spent as much time reading about what Neil ate for dinner, what repairs he made to his bike, what (briefly described) old friend he met, etc., than about the process of coming to grips with grief. Understandable that he preferred dealing with day-to-day details to take his mind off the hurt while on the road, but as a final narrative, it gets a bit tedious to the reader who doesn’t have much emotional connection to these things, at least not as they’re told. Though he clearly misses his wife and daughter, he doesn’t say much about them, which makes it hard to empathize with his breakdowns along the way. Flashes into the struggle of the soul are there, but they often get deflected into self-conscious banter which likewise gets a little old. For example, reading about a middle-aged rock drummer chasing after squirrels with a water gun has potential to be comical in an existential way, but Neil manages to deflate the moment by trying to make it sound WITTY. Also, his occasional jabs at fat people, trailer trash, and oblivious Americans left a bad taste — taking cheap shots at easy targets is not moving writing. He was mostly above that in song lyrics. All of us get lost in the darkness, he said at one point, so he should know better than to write as if he were the only one ever so badly hurt.

Rush fans looking for a more personal connection to their favorite band will probably be disappointed (for one thing, Rush is mentioned mainly only incidentally). You certainly get some insight into the workings of the man’s mind and the origins of various song lyrics (which preface each chapter), but the delivery of the book is so workmanlike, it’s hard to feel a lot of emotional weight from his experience (though it’s obviously there). Ghost Rider really could have a been a fascinating, instead of merely interesting read, if only Neil had taken the time to trim down the breadth and expand on the depth. I’d imagine he wrapped up the book in a hurry to work on the latest Rush CD, Vapor Trails, which, on the whole, is a lot more moving (listen to the SONG Ghost Rider).

Overall, I admire that Mr. Peart drove himself to write this, and I think he’s got a good book or two in him (or a slew of articles), if he focuses better on reaching out to the reader, but for now he shouldn’t quit the day job! (Please, no!) So, anyone thinking about buying Ghost Rider should carefully read the reviews here and make up his or her own mind.

(Update 2011: added some new thoughts in the comments section)

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