An older cover for this ISBN may be found here.

It's 1959 and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, one-time high-school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he flees his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, 'after you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate'.