With photographs by Johannes Paul Spengler. On the road across the USA, from the East to the West coast, notebook and camera at the ready. Pictures, landscapes, people, experiences and stories come unite in a song with many voices, a love song to traveling and to life before death. A loud bang – and the Mercedes 300 Turbo Diesel in which the author Astrid Rosenfeld and the photographer Johannes Paul Spengler wanted to drive from New York to San Franscisco has been crashed into by another car before they have even left Manhattan. Totalled. »You can’t kill a Mercedes«, the used-car salesman had told them, and that the car was in excellent condition with only one previous owner. His Eau de Toilette was even still in the glove compartment, and Astrid Rosenfeld secretly names the unknown man Frankie. And then the journey begins. Not in Frankie’s car, after all, but with his spirit and his story along for the ride nonetheless. An adventure-filled road trip across Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas to California, filled with crazy, absurd and heart-wrenching encounters.