A solo motorcycle journey from Austin, Texas, to Alaska's Arctic Ocean becomes a reckoning with grief, family, and the limits of forward motion.

When Michael Mirasole points a 310cc BMW motorcycle north toward Deadhorse, Alaska, he tells himself it's about the ride - 7,000 miles of open road, mountain passes, and the Dalton Highway's 414 miles of unpaved wilderness. But the trip he planned and the trip he takes are not the same.

What begins as an escape from decades of accumulated loss - his brother, his parents, a marriage - becomes something harder to outrun. A weeklong wildfire evacuation from Jasper National Park forces an unexpected reckoning. Strangers on the road offer the kind of grace he stopped expecting. And somewhere between the crash on a remote Alaskan slope and the long ride home, the distance he was seeking reveals itself as the wrong kind.

Throttle On is a literary travel memoir about a man who confused motion with presence, told with spare, precise prose that trusts the reader to feel what the narrator can't yet say. It is a story about grief carried on two wheels, the people who steady you without knowing it, and the moment you realize the longest distance left to cross is the length of a kitchen table.