Follow the Money by Steve Roggan was an interesting book to
read but not for the reasons that I thought it was going to be. This book
follows a brief period in the life of Steve Roggan, an English reporter who decides to follow a
US ten-dollar bill for a month. He had done something similar in the UK with a
ten-pound note before he decided to go on this adventure across the United
State of America.
In the introduction to this book, Steve Roggan briefly
recounts his adventures following the ten-pound note in the UK, including all
the weird and wacky things that were done in his presence. This set my
expectations up for a bit of a thrill ride for this book. Instead, the author
decides to use the book to highlight the hopes and struggles for the people
that he becomes close with during his travels.
This change in focus kept my attention. For the most part,
Steve highlights the ordinary people he meets during his travels across
America. Some of my favourites included the talented pub musician who was too
scared to take a chance with his music while trying to keep his family together
and a farming couple that lived in a dying country town. Rather than a
swashbuckling adventure through America that I expected following the
introduction these stories instead highlighted a much mellower journey through
the lives of the ordinary people.
Steve Roggan was also a good judge of how long to keep each
of these segments before they start to drag. With the exception of one or two
of the people he meets, he keeps the pace of the book up and moves onto writing
about the next leg of his journey before my interest in his story waned.
However, he kept writing about his fears of losing the ten-dollar bill so often
that I got pretty bored during those parts as I felt it was a given that it is
a risky journey. It started to come across as either a space-filler or him
whining like a child.
Overall, this book was highly enjoyable. Although not quite
the book I was expecting, it still kept me entertained (with the exception of
his whining) with a very mellow journey through the lives of fairly ordinary
Americans.
4 out of 5 cross-country waffles.
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