Book excerpt: Perhaps the ultimate woman's road novel, She Drove Without Stopping presents young Jane Turner's cross-country journey toward self-possession. As she refuses to turn back from a terrain we all know is dangerous to women, her wit wrestles with the violence she encounters on a risky odyssey. She Drove Without Stopping is a lusty and forthright novel. Jaimy Gordon, whose earlier books have earned her reputation as a brilliant stylist, here tells the story of a very young, very bold American woman deciding what she wants. In Jane Turner she has created a character so fresh, so self-consumed and self-righteous, that she reveals secrets of a special and particularly American type of woman.