Ron McLarty has done it again.

Ron McLarty, author of The Memory of Running, writes of wonderfully human protagonists whose lives and experiences resonate with the reader. Jono Riley is an aging bartender and part-time actor with a wonderful girlfriend and a fear of commitment. The death of Maria D’Agostino—Jono’s childhood friend and first love—compels Jono to return to his childhood neighborhood.

In chapters alternating between present day and the past, McLarty paints a vivid portrait of growing up in an East Providence, Rhode Island neighborhood in the 1960s. THE TRAVELER is the story of a man’s quest to understand how a specific incident in the past creates ripples that travel with a person to effect life even forty years later. Though the description of this book is necessarily vague (it is hard to give a good description without giving anything away) the book is compelling.

I especially enjoyed the details—the way Jono chafes at being defined by his acting rolls, the feel of Jono’s childhood, the love of and for an old friend that doesn’t fade no matter how many years and miles separate them.