Martin Bauman was twenty-three and restless when he embarked on a solo bicycle trek across Canada. It was a ride that came in the wake of his father's sudden depression, his cousin's suicide, and the stirring up of his own childhood of buried memories. He had billed the 7,000-kilometre journey as a mission to encourage people—men, especiall—to talk about depression. It was ironic that he was so reluctant to talk about his own.

In Hell of a Ride, Bauman—named one of Canada's "emergent" authors by the RBC Taylor Prize in 2020—brings his sharp reporting instincts and lyrical prose to explore a timely question: how much of the past do we carry with us? And how much of our fate is ours to choose?

A spiritual successor to the bicycle-bound escapades of Kate Harris's Lands of Lost Borders, with an emotional candour reminiscent of Antonio Michael Downing's Saga Boy and Greg Gilhooly's I Am Nobody, Bauman's Hell of a Ride takes its readers on a journey from the rain-slicked streets of Vancouver, British Columbia, to the hills of St. John's, Newfoundland, through encounters with couch-surfing swingers, pot-smoking Maritimers, runaway army veterans, prairie farmers, steely-eyed birdwatchers, and Kiwi empty-nesters. Along the way, Bauman interrogates the past through reflections on home, family secrets, and belonging: How to feel at home in a place one always itches to leave? And if one is always on the move, how to find a home at all?

Heartfelt and uplifting, Hell of a Ride is a coming-of-age tale of a son's search to connect with his father and also come to terms with his own past. It is a clarion call for deep community, an ode to forgivenes—of oneself and others—and a love letter to the call of adventure.

Martin Bauman is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared on air and in print across Canada and in the United Kingdom, including in The Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald, Capital Daily, Waterloo Region Record, and The Coast. In 2020, he was named one of five "emergent" nonfiction writers across Canada by the RBC Taylor Prize. A passionate speaker and mental health advocate, Bauman has been a youth panelist for the Canada-wide Spotlight on Invisible Disabilities Partnership and bicycled solo across Canada in 2016 to raise funds for community-based services in his hometown of Waterloo, Ontario. He holds an MFA in writing from the University of Victoria and now lives, writes, and rides his bicycle in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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