When I was looking back through my notes to write my reading year in review, I wasn’t surprised to discover that I read more books by Joe Lansdale in 2020 than any other author. Lansdale is so prolific, and his work is of such a high quality, that his new books immediately go to the top of my TBR stack. So I was happy to start 2021 with what I knew would be a high point, Jane Goes North.

Jane Goes North is a cross-country road trip novel. Think Thelma and Louise, but without the murder, at least at first, and instead of two glamorous Hollywood actresses, we have two rode hard, put away wet white trash women from East Texas. Jane has lost her job, and her car has given up the ghost, but her uppity little sister is getting married in Boston, and dammit, Jane wants to attend the wedding, more out of spite than anything else. Henry is a one-eyed, weight lifting woman with more than one chip on her shoulder, and with even less prospects than Jane, but she’s heading north for reasons of her own, so the two for an uneasy alliance and hit the road.

As Jane and Henry travel, they meet a colorful assortment of characters, get into scrapes both minor and life threatening, and slowly, painfully, in ways that feel both honest and earned, form a grudging friendship.

This is Lansdale hitting on all cylinders. None of the characters we meet seem like cardboard cutouts dropped into the story strictly to be roadblocks in Jane and Henry’s path. Each one feels real, organic, like they belong. Lansdale has always had a gift for creating believable characters, even those who are just passing through. Jane Goes North is often riotously funny, with dialogue that’s both smart and smart-assed.

This being Lansdale, though, it’s not all humor. Jane and Henry (and eventually a faded but still ass-kicking country singer named Cheryl) face heart-stopping danger, with more than one dead body as a result. This is one of Lansdale’s other substantial gifts—the man writes action set-pieces as good as anyone today. He’s a natural born storyteller, and reading Jane Goes North at times feels as though you’re sitting around a campfire with a beer in your hand, listening to a thrilling tale recounted by a master who has you in the palm of his hand.

One final note. The ending of this novel caught me by surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did, and it also, just maybe, put a lump in my throat.