Synopses & Reviews
American tour guide Joe Newhouse wants nothing more than to reach Venice. Since moving to Munich after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he's watched his business fail, his wife leave him, and his love for Europe diminish. Now he faces one last ten-day tour with a surly group that doesn't want to be there. As he leads them through the mythic lands of Europe's Romantic past, he grows increasingly disturbed by their stories of earlier lives, puzzled by their desire to be with a man who doesn't arrive, and entangled in an illicit affair that promises to either save him or plunge his tour-and his life-into madness.
Soaked in the Romantic atmosphere and dark deeds of old Europe — as well as the freedoms and hopes of a new era — The Last Grand Tour takes us on a perilous journey through Hitler's Berchtesgaden, Mozart's Salzburg, and Mad King Ludwig's Bavarian fantasyland before reaching its stunning climax in the murky waters of Venice. Along the way, it explores the often-shifting lines between fidelity and freedom, illusion and reality, regret and desire.
Review
"With The Last Grand Tour, Michael N. McGregor has delivered a thoroughly absorbing novel. His prose has a kind of hypnotic, cleansing melancholy, and his emotional intelligence is formidable. I suspect anyone who loves travel or travelers will encounter some version of themselves within these pages. Bravo." Tom Bissell, author of The Disaster Artist, Extra Lives, and God Lives in St. Petersburg
About the Author
Michael N. McGregor spent over a decade leading Americans through Europe, before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition to working with Rick Steves, he ran his own smaller company, Halcyon Tours. One of the many people he met in his travels was the poet Robert Lax, who became the subject of his first book, Pure Act. A former professor, McGregor lives in Seattle, where he hosts the Cascadia Writers-in-Conversation series and curates the website WritingtheNorthwest.com.