Harrison’s "The English Major" (2008) is a road novel about a 60-year-old former high school English teacher and farmer from Michigan, who after a divorce and the sale of his farm, heads westward on a mind-clearing road trip. Along the way, he falls into an affair with a former student, reconnects with his big-shot son in San Francisco, confers on questions of life and lust with an old doctor friend, and undertakes a project to rename all the states and their state birds.