Jacket Notes: When Bob Chester set out for the toe of Italy with his wife Sally and his little daughter Josie in the sleeper cab of his 30-ton truck, it seemed like a family excursion. But Cardona and his associates needed just such a vehicle. They also needed its crew. And there was one sure way of getting Bob and Sally’s cooperation for a return load, as it was called.
If the life of your only child is at stake, how far will you go? What hardships and exhaustions will you suffer? What degradations will you accept? And when, compared with that one life, nothing else in the world matters, is there anyone you can count as your friend? Bob and Sally learn the answers to these questions on the next 2,000 miles.
The background Douglas Rutherford has chosen for his latest story is the world of the transcontinental vans, the juggernauts bearing the TIR sign and the warning “Long Vehicle.” The action thunders along the great motoring highways of Europe, across frontiers, the searchlight headlamps turning night into day.
This is a tense and human drama of a man and a woman in the cab of a long-distance hauler whose only thought is to meet the desperate deadline that will keep their child alive.
(© Walker and Company)