The Long Way Home: A Frank Mercer Story

By Steve Anderson

Frank Mercer spent most of his life waiting for someday.

Someday he and his wife, Doris, would travel. Someday he'd slow down. Someday there would be time.

Then, after twenty years in the Navy and more than three decades keeping machinery running at a diesel plant, Frank is finally forced into retirement. Six weeks later, Doris is gone.

Left with an old Ford, a restored Airstream, a small dog named Bassie, and a house suddenly too quiet to bear, Frank discovers something Doris never showed him: a worn road atlas filled with circles, stars, notes, and places she had been saving for the two of them.

So Frank sells the house, keeps what matters, and starts driving.

His first trip takes him through Kentucky and Tennessee, where a cracked trailer frame, a stubborn welder, a cave Doris always wanted to see, and a few unexpected detours begin teaching Frank something he never learned in a machine shop: not everything in life is meant to be fixed.

Sometimes you just keep moving.

The Long Way Home is a warm, funny, deeply human story about grief, second chances, family, and discovering that the road ahead can still belong to you, even when the life you planned does not.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HKQGY1Y3
• ISBN13: 9798176460186
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 118 Pages
• Weight: 0.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"