Eastbound
You can run across a continent, but you cannot outrun the truth
Published
Sep 23, 2026
Pages
241
Language
English
Publisher
Self-published
ISBN
9798182224383
Classification
Also shelved in
Subgenres
“Even if it’s too late for forgiveness, it’s not too late for honesty.”
— Eastbound
Synopsis
Six months after a disastrous patient transport job leaves a vulnerable patient and his best friend, Lucas, seriously injured, Josh sets off alone on the journey across Canada they had planned to take together.
He tells himself that distance will help him move on. That if he travels far enough, the guilt will fade and the version of events he has chosen to live with will become easier to believe.
Instead, the past follows him.
From Vancouver to the Rockies and across the endless Prairies, ordinary moments pull Josh back to the night he is trying to escape: a reflection in a mirror, a carry chair, the colour of a stranger’s dress. As he meets fellow travellers carrying regrets and secrets of their own, the story he has built around his greatest mistake begins to unravel.
Among them is Claude, an elderly widower whose own past has followed him for fifty years. Through their unlikely friendship, Josh is forced to confront a truth he has spent six months avoiding.
Because some journeys are not about leaving the past behind.
They are about finally turning to face it.
Michael Oliver
Michael Oliver spent his teenage years volunteering with a first-aid organisation and later undertook patient and urgent transport work while studying podiatry at university. He worked clinically in healthcare for 14 years before moving into NHS programme and transformation management. The landscapes and many of the encounters in Eastbound were inspired by his own journey across Canada, although Josh’s story is entirely fictional. Michael lives in Plymouth with his wife and three children