Richard Lazar is a failed novelist and an alcoholic, living in a trailer in Phoenix. But when he publishes a gritty memoir about his service in the Vietnam War, he becomes an almost instantaneous success. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest fan: an awkward, depressed student named Vance.

Vance has problems of his own. But when he volunteers to chauffeur Richard for the rest of the tour, the two of them wind up on a hilariously disastrous cross-country road trip, gradually coming to bond as only two misanthropes can. The Grand Tour is the story of an unlikely frienship, and a panoramic view of America from a bold new voice in fiction.