Most families are complicated, but for Pastor Laura O’Brien, who writes under the penname LL O’Brien, hers is a Gordian knot of resentment, denial, and dysfunction. Her memoir, Hope on Wheels, with the “Hope” scrawled in red over a crossed-out “Hell,” lays bare her formative years, her father’s early death at 42, her poor performance in school, her struggles with alcohol, and the cross-country family bicycle trip that became her path to healing.
Take the trip
LL O’Brien’s memoir Hope on Wheels is available locally at Coalesce Bookstore in Morro Bay, Volumes of Pleasure in Los Osos, online at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and other retailers, and as an e-book.
O’Brien is pastor of SLO’s Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church, but don’t expect a staid, formal, feel-good coming of age tome—there are too many “fucks” and raw emotions on display in this book she describes as “Angela’s Ashes meets The Goonies.”
After her father’s death, she feels not grief but relief because her family had been so dysfunctional and in denial about her abusive father. Labeled a dyke because of her tomboyish ways and refusal to conform to her parents’ idea of traditional gender norms, she feels like the outsider as the fifth child in a sprawling family of nine kids.
Vividly written, her story is populated by well described moments.
“That was when I noticed the cigarette burns on the countertop. Dad would rest his Lucky Strikes on the edge of the counter and forget about them, leaving marks all around the kitchen and any other flat surface in the house. The burn marks were a reminder that the scars he had inflicted would remain long after his death.”
For summer vacation, her mother decides she and her youngest six kids are going to ride across the country on bicycles from their home in Dallas, Oregon, to Washington, D.C., and then on to New York City. Over the next 415 pages, O’Brien describes the eight-week trip and her feelings regarding her family. None of them had biked any distance before, and they were ill-prepared for what lay ahead. Her family members who read her account have been none too pleased.
“They didn’t [like it],” O’Brien admitted in her church office. “What’s funny is we’re all white-collar, educated people, but you get us all together, and we’re still those little rascals. We’re not nice to each other. We are nice to each other if it’s one on one, but if you threw us all into a situation, we can’t go on. We can’t have a reunion, let’s just say that.
“I knew going in they were going to be really, really angry, but my mom wrote me a letter, and she validated everything, so I’m kind of like, ‘Well, you guys can kind of piss off.’ I’ve spent a year now thinking about what I did to them, and maybe it wasn’t fair that I didn’t give them a better heads-up. That’s their biggest anger. But I let one of them read it and he didn’t talk to me again, ever.”
With eight brothers and sisters and their spouses, O’Brien wasn’t “game” for being “bombarded by eight people” offering criticism before the book was published.
“I knew going in, it was not going to be well received, but the more I thought about it, I told my story. I don’t tell theirs. At no point did I say how they felt, what they thought. I gave those parameters for myself, and I told the editors that we aren’t telling my brothers’ and sisters’ story.”
That said, while the names have been changed, the characters are all based on her family, but instead of coming off as bad people, they simply seem flawed and complicated but altogether normal human beings. Even her mother, who O’Brien clearly harbors resentment toward, is sympathetic.
‘I want people to realize that you’re not confined by your geography or your dysfunctional family or by anything, that the world’s a big place, and doors do open. And when they open, go through. Don’t live in fear.’
—LL O’Brien, Hope on Wheels
“She was 46 years old, you know? And she was a widow with nine kids. And her husband was—I’ll just say it—he was not a good guy. He wasn’t. He was a very flawed man.”
Prone to pitting his children against one another, her father was an alcoholic chain smoker and district attorney with ethics problems. Yet her parents grew up in an America that worked for straight white people, and her parents were outwardly successful. When they were newly married, Kennedy was president, and it really felt like Camelot.
“They were like [the movie] Grease. She graduated 1956. Everything was perfect, and she worked so hard to keep that, and it just fell apart all around her. And then she had this daughter who would not conform for nothing. It was like [General] Custer [at Little Bighorn] for her. She had nine kids, and we knew we outnumbered her.”
When they eventually bicycle off on their trip, it quickly becomes apparent they’re not prepared for what was to come.
“We really didn’t know what we were doing. We grew up in the Willamette Valley. It’s a lot gentler than even the Seattle area. The summers are 85 degrees, gorgeous, [the terrain] flat—the idea of climbing, you go up 300 feet, not 10,000 feet. We had no clue what we were doing.”
Still, they often managed to ride 120 miles in a day, and they saw the country in a way most of us never will.
“What it did is opened my eyes and opened my siblings’ eyes too. The world’s bigger. For somebody to travel to Europe or to go to New York City, that was like going to the moon.”
Today, O’Brien lives in San Luis Obispo with her husband and their daughter. When her book was released last year, she had a book signing at Morro Bay’s Coalesce Bookstore, and a young woman approached and asked her what it was about.
“I said, ‘Oh, you know what? Actually, it’s about somebody your age.’”
The girl’s name was Autumn, and she was from Sacramento. Later she contacted O’Brien through Facebook.
“She said, ‘I want you to know that book, I identified with it so much. I don’t know if I can go to university. I don’t know if I’m smart enough.’” O’Brien recalled.
“I want people to realize that you’re not confined by your geography or your dysfunctional family or by anything, that the world’s a big place, and doors do open. And when they open, go through,” she said. “Don’t live in fear, and don’t live by somebody else’s narrative of who they think you should be. Just take the opportunity. That’s the message. That’s it.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in May 14-21, 2026.
