Neil Peart's “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road” - A Review
One of the most emotionally vexing, yet immensely inspirational memoirs I’ve ever read. Documenting in extraordinary detail the most painful time in his life, Neil Peart’s “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road” is a “sweet miracle” of a story about life on the road — a dark, turbulent journey towards acceptance, recovery and redemption from the worst heartbreak one could ever know.
Between August 1997 and June 1998, Neil Peart, drummer for the Canadian progressive rock band Rush, lost his 19-year-old daughter Selena in a one-vehicle car accident. Ten months later, terminal cancer took Jackie, his wife of 22 years. Peart’s notorious penchant for privacy appropriately dissuades him from going into detail on the tragedies themselves throughout the book. But his words leave no doubt as to the impact they had on his own life, his future with Rush and coming to grips with unimaginable tragedy.
With little to lose (and live for), Peart, a motorcycle aficionado since he was a teenager, saddled up his 1994 BMW R1100GS motorcycle and set forth on a 28,000 mile-long soul-searching journey of recovery that took him from Canada’s Northwest Territories, down the west coast of the United States, into Mexico and back. “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road” documents this extraordinary journey, one Peart himself had little hope would do anything for his recovery. But it was something he needed to do. Motion was key — just keep moving and, by doing so, approach increased solace with each passing mile.
Jack Kerouac writes in his indelible “On the Road” that "...the road is life." “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road” is a chronicle not of moving on, but moving forward. One can never move on from emotional agony like his. But they can, with strength and perseverance, pick up the pieces, honor the lost and keep living. The road is life!
Based on his own letters and notes from the road, “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road” ultimately proved itself as spiritually effective as the journey itself. It is a memoir of remorse, of great humor, a little bit of good natured bias towards American politics (Peart’s a Canadian) and charmed atonement. For Rush fans, the book rarely mentions anything about fellow Rush bandmates Geddy Lee or Alex Lifeson. But what we do get is the story of Peart’s return to the band and recording studio in 2001 to begin work on Rush’s seventeenth studio album, 2002s masterful “Vapor Trails.” The album itself is a lyrical collection heavily devoted to one man’s journey out of the abyss towards a lifetime of peace and serenity, especially the song “Sweet Miracle.” Since then, Rush has gone on to produce some of their best music in decades.
“Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road” is well worth the time, not only for fellow Rush fans, but for anyone who has ever suffered loss, bitter grief and finding themselves in search of their own road towards redemption. It’s proof that life does (and will) go on, hearts do mend and spirits do lift. There is life after tragedy if we find our inner strengths.
Peart's journey serves testament that life is a gift.
