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Letters to Zerky

A Father's Legacy to a Lost Son and a Road Trip Around the World

Author: Bill Raney and JoAnne Walker Raney
446 pages, 6 color and 87 b&w photographs, 5 color maps, 29 b&w maps, Epilogue and Index, 5.75 x 8.75
ISBN: 978-0-9821384-0-3 $27.00
Pub Date: November 1st, 2009
Published by: Nickelodeon Press
Distributed by: Small Press United (SPU), a division of Independent Publishing Group (IPG)

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So many of us have dreamt about taking off for parts unknown, to see and experience the world. From April of 1967 until May of 1968, a young couple lived that dream. A few months after Bill Raney and his wife JoAnne adopted an infant son they called Zerky (Eric Xerxes Raney), the three of them embarked -- with their miniature dachshund, Tarzan -- on a trip in a new Volkswagen camper-van. It took them nearly around the world.

They traveled across Europe and through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Assam, then flew on to Thailand and Hong Kong, before returning to San Francisco -- a trip that couldn't be replicated today. Their experiences were sometimes fabulous, sometimes frightening, but always enlightening, as they discovered different cultures and wonderful people. Because Zerky was too young to remember his great adventure, his father wrote him a series of letters along the way, while his mother kept a diary. Both were for Zerky to read someday when he was older and would be curious about all the things he had seen and done.