Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive meets A Christmas Carol in an introspective magical realism narrative told through multiple timelines and one woman’s car.

Twenty-two-year-old college dropout Harper is taking an impulsive road trip across the U.S., and she won’t stop until she reaches the coast–it’s the best way to outrun the ghosts from her past. Or maybe it’s not, considering her ghosts keep showing up in the backseat of her Subaru. Past exes, her roommate, it doesn’t matter who these uninvited hitchhikers are–they all have something to teach Harper, something to help her discover what she’s been hiding from herself.

But there’s one hitchhiker Harper can’t shake: the one she’s avoiding most, and the one who knows the most about Harper–like why she ran away in the first place.