Good adventure book and a history lesson. Nowadays, I find I rarely finish a book. I don't know whether to blame it on my faltering attention span or on the author. Recently, I read a book entitled Letters to Zerky that made the point moot, as I had trouble putting it down until I had finished it.

Whether you own a Westfalia or a regular van, we Vanagon owners tend to consider ourselves more of the adventurous and can do type. That spirit permeates Bill and Joanne Raney's account of their adventure purchasing a VW camper bus new in Germany in 1967, then proceeding from country to country, continent to continent, with their one year old son, Zerky, and their dog, Tarzan.

The story is effectively told in diary/letter format, documenting the trip for their son who could later read about a trip that he would be too young to remember. Within two years of returning to the States, both Joanne and Zerky, in separate circumstances, tragically died (the reader is told this at the beginning). These letters were put away and rediscovered 40 years later and made into a book, not their original purpose.

Ref ID: VCZERKYSBOOK