When his only son turns 13, a divorced, Jewish, 60-year-old writer buys a used pickup so that father and son can truck together on the open road, bickering and bonding.

Such is the premise of "Truckin' With Sam," a frank, funny, quasi-religious memoir of one graying Boomer's attempt to redefine fatherhood.

While the narrative begins humbly in a Starbucks coffee shop on Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill, it morphs into a buddy picture of epic proportion, from Atlantic City to Monument Valley to the Alaskan frontier and beyond, including the vaulting mountain heights of Tibet.

That's because the writer is not just any "old new dad" struggling to bond with his teenager. Author of more than 20 books, Lee Gutkind is one of Pittsburgh's most prominent and successful writers and leading advocate of the creative nonfiction writing school.

Mr. Gutkind typically works like an anthropologist garnering material for his books. He spends years gaining entrance to and carefully observing a closed community -- organ transplantation, robotics engineers, baseball umpires -- then delivers an insightful, character-driven chronicle that unveils that subculture with dramatic flair and intensity.

In "Truckin' With Sam," however, the closed-community motif is personal: His own father-son relationships.

In his 2003 memoir, "Forever Fat," Mr. Gutkind first delved into his stormy relationship with his dad. This new book amplifies many of those 1950s traumas, but it aims to be a corrective by focusing on the new generation. Sam Gutkind's coming-of-age, under the tutelage of a literati father, will not resemble Mr. Gutkind's bar mitzvah experience.

The book's designing principle is a 4,300-mile road trip over the Alaska-Canadian Highway to a writers' conference where Mr. Gutkind is a featured guest.

Both Gutkinds keep journals along the way. We learn about video gaming, border crossing mishaps, glacier climbing, and the test of wills that can be prompted by a tuna fish sandwich.

"Truckin' " is the Gutkind code word for spontaneity. It means summer; a guys-only road trip; a soundtrack from the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin and The Rolling Stones; and a time when "you can do what you want to sometimes; you don't always need to do what's expected."

In the book's 30 chapters, dozens of truckin' adventures are detailed. Mr. Gutkind writes the lion's share of each vignette and Sam's journal entry closes. The second half of the book, "Religious Experiences," moves in a more international and spiritual direction:

Israel, the death camps of Europe, Jewish identity, the Great Wall of China, theoretical physics.

Sam, 18 as the story winds down, becomes a more distinct personality in his own right, differentiating himself with his passion for science, not the literary. He's Carnegie Mellon University-bound.

The anecdotes and observations offered up by the Gutkinds are contradictory and fascinating, embarrassing and mundane. "Truckin' " is not the spontaneous travelogue promised by the title, in the final analysis. It is better shelved in parenting. Adventurous parenting.

Each summer, Papa Gutkind pushes the envelope of adventure. In the book's climactic section, a nod to Hemingway, father and son mount a five-day climb of Africa's Kilimanjaro in 2009. The two limp to the summit in victory. After the guide snaps their picture, they realize there's no time to celebrate. The trek down is even longer and more arduous.

If there can be a sequel to this "I've Been to the Mountaintop," Mr. Gutkind will surprise us all, except for his son.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.