Road Sailors

NEVER HAS THERE BEEN a novel written with such honesty and insight into what it is like being an identical twin. This is not only because it is based on a true story but because the author is a twin. After seven years apart, separated after having a fight and Trapp McFlynn leaving for the Far East to work as a professor at the University of Hong Kong, the brothers lose touch with one another, each following different paths. When Trapp is relaxing at a café in Hong Kong he meets a doctor who is fascinated about twins and after a robust exchange Trapp learns that his identical twin is his mirror twin. The doctors happily explains that mirror twins are the closest wo human being can be since they were the same egg for a minimum of nine days, after which the fertilized eggs splits before the twelfth day – any longer and the twins would be conjoined or “Siamese Twins.” Being what is called identical opposites, Trapp is a natural right-hander while his twin Remy is a natural left-hander. Trapp lived the nine-to-five working life while Remy lived in his camper and traveled Canada like a nomad until he had a vision while on Vancouver Island that told him to move east until he met an Indian Medicine Man. Remy spend seven years studying under his teacher, learning the ways of the Red Man, their spiritual beliefs and culminating with Remy graduating as a Sundancer, the most respected and most difficult of all. It is at this time Trapp returns from his years in Asia to meet his twin brother so they can find a property to buy.
Trapp is shocked at the change in his brother, at first intrigued and then concerned when Remy speaks of his own that he is the long-awaited Messiah of the Hopi Prophecies. His unchecked extremism has allowed him to go deeply into a world of make believe and ancestor spirits, but as their search for a property takes more and more time the twins begin to know each other again, bridging the gap that had separated them for over seven years. Remy, now that he has become a Sundancer, is a spiritual healer who can see the anger that afflicts his brother but who doesn’t believe Remy is a shaman. Over time as the twins travel from British Columbia to the Yukon and then across the prairie provinces they drink beer and smoke tea and play billiard at countless small bars that dot the underbelly of Canada, slowly seeing how each of them had evolved in their own way, parallel to each other yet opposite in many ways. IT is their mutual love for adventure and road-tripping that brings them closer despite being poles apart, step by step, and mile after mile they laugh their way into each other’s confidence and soon Remy tells Trapp of his affliction. He is told he is a Wendigokaan, a sacred clown who bucks authority and always does things backwards. Ludicrous and insane being his first thoughts, Trapp soon sees that the character of his spirit is exactly that: a Wendigokaan, which is the key he needed to release his anger and begin his path to health.
Laugh-out-loud in parts, unique and true dialogue between twins, this fast-paced account of a road trip across Canada is sure to become an icon in genre of road trips like Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac in On the Road. These McFlynn twins are like modern-day beatniks who flaunt the mainstream live and live in their road buggies, sleeping anywhere, whether an old logging road or in the parking lot of a bar or in an abandoned quarry, not once do they pay for accommodation. They define a culture on wheels and end of a long way from where they start.