Lou has a lot of allies on the road, but her number 1, her sidekick, her partner in crime is Lady Luck: the family RV she takes on the road to find her missing teenage daughter Abby.
Lady is a 2006 Class C Lazy Daze. Ford E-450 chassis, 6.8-liter V-10 engine, four 160-amp solar panels on the roof. Twenty-six feet six inches. Front engine, rear wheel drive. Vehicle height ten feet six inches, width eight feet three inches.
Citing vehicle specs is the way people in vanlife greet each other. Like any experienced nomad, Lou can reel them off without thinking.
Her husband Brian grew up in Ventura, living the California dream: surfing, partying, summers spent dawn to dusk on the beach. When Lou met him in grad school, his vehicle was a 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia, a “surfmobile” he called Charlotte. From some of their first dates, Lou and Brian took Charlotte out on the road: beach camping, hiking, skiing, visiting national parks, down to Baja and up to Canada. Brian was a vanlifer long before the hashtag.
They graduated, got married, got hired at U.C. Santa Barbara.
As academics they had the summers off. Camping became part of their family life. They kept Charlotte for a while, but with a double income and a baby, it made sense to upgrade to a small RV, and Lady Luck became their vacation home on wheels.
The kitchen boasts butcher block countertops, a deep sink with a Berkey water filter, a black-and-white real tile backsplash, a small microwave above the sink, embossed copper tiles on the ceiling. The fridge/freezer works on propane with the option of electric.
There’s a pop-out trash can; the spice/coffee/tea drawer and the pots and pans drawer under the fridge both slide out on rollers. Hanging mesh bags hold onions, garlic, fruit, potatoes. A magnetic knife rack corrals some serious Japanese steel. Brian’s the cook, which is just fine with Lou. On her own she makes do with microwave meals more often than not.
The tiny entry hall has storage for shoes, and hooks for coats and keys. Family photos from happier times decorate the walls. The couch/table area is dressed with tribal blankets and pillows, and can fold out into a spare bed; the former above-cab bed is now storage for Lou’s office. The table is handmade, inlaid with different native woods to create a map of California.
The glazed-tile bathroom is kind of a masterpiece: The shower is separate and enclosed, with a sun dome for natural light. There’s a composting toilet, and the black tank is a sizable thirty gallons, so Lou can go a couple of weeks without finding some place to empty it. Partly because - even with a close to ideal bathroom setup, she’s adopted the nomad habit of not using her own toilet if she can help it. Shop for groceries? Use the bathroom. Stop for gas? Use the bathroom. Overnight camping? Use the toilet block.
The rear bedroom/lounge combo is its own room, painted white for light and dressed in purples and dark greens, with a sliding door partition. It can be arranged into a couch and a single bed, two single beds, two couches, or a full bed, and has three large windows.
Linda Yoshi has a great YouTube channel on her adventures in her renovated Lazy Daze
A few years ago, when Abby turned old enough to protest family camping trips, Lou put her foot down, insisting on the relative luxury of AirBnb’s bedrooms, bathrooms, a patio or deck— hell, a hot tub. She pointed out to Brian repeatedly that they weren’t getting any younger and they’d earned it. More to the point, she’d earned it. Abby still occasionally joined Brian in Lady Luck for a surf weekend, and sometimes she took Lady on her own weekends with friends —though mostly Lady languished in the carport.
But when the day came, and it did— six months after Abby went missing and Lou’d spent over twenty grand on hotel and travel bills, chasing leads all over California, Brian looked up from his morning matcha and said gently, “Babe, we can’t keep—”
Lou told him “I can.”
And she led him out to the side drive where the carport sheltered Lady Luck.
Lady pre-empted so much. Lou had been driving her and her previous incarnations for twenty-five years. The learning curve was basically non-existent. She could make and break camp like a pro. She knew California roads, she knew gray water tanks and black water hookups; propane tanks and generators.
And although the money had never been the issue, it was so much easier to make it the issue— instead of acknowledging the much stickier issue of basic sanity.
Laid back was a description invented for Brian. He was good for Lou that way, unfazed by her explosive temperament. But now - laid back was the last thing she needed. And she was secretly afraid of leveling Brian with her rage.
Her rage was all that was keeping her upright.
They’d mutually agreed they needed his teaching income. The truth was it was a relief that he didn’t offer to go on the road with her.
The first time Lou started Lady up and took her out had been like coming home.
It’d been years since she’d been behind the wheel of one of these mammoths, and she’d forgotten the sheer power of piloting six tons of steel, that Don’t-fuck-with-me feeling of barreling down the road, higher than cars, miles flying by, the whole world open to you.
For the first time since Abby vanished, Lou could breathe again.
Because they were going to find her. Lou and Lady, together. They would burn the roads down until they brought their baby home.
There are a lot of songs on our Lost Highway playlist, but this is the one that nails Lou and Lady’s relationship:
“Raw, wrenching, and totally compelling—The Grapevine hooked me from start to end.”
—Ruth Ware, internationally bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10
“Right from the first page, readers will be compelled to follow bull-headed and strangely loveable Lou Gommersall on a one woman (plus 1) quest to solve the mystery of her 19-year-old daughter’s disappearance a year ago…I can’t wait to see what Sokoloff and Robertson have in store for Lou and friends in this fantastic new series that’s packed with psychological thrills and propulsive momentum.”
—firstCLUE
“The plot is compelling, and the scenes involving the RV are particularly suspenseful. Fans of Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls will enjoy this first book in a new series.”
—Booklist
“A California road trip, a missing persons search, and a protagonist full of heart, hope, and sass combine to make for a unique and thrilling mystery. I raced through The Grapevine faster than an RV on the open road. I love Lou Gomersall. She may just be my new favorite series character.”
—Lisa Gray, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Thin Air
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