How to read the air / Mengestu, Dinaw

Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas, the son of Ethiopian immigrants, sets out to retrace his mother and father's trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to his life in the America of today.

Jonas, having left his marriage, embarks on an emotional journey by reconstructing the family story of a trip from Peoria to Nashville before he was born that ended with the car in a ditch and his mother's final departure from his abusive father.