Tom Layward, the narrator and main character of Ben Markovits’ new novel, The Rest of Our Lives, introduces himself in a curious way: On the very first page of the book, he talks, matter-of-factly, about the affair his wife, Amy, had 12 years ago, when their two kids were young.

Amy, who’s Jewish, got involved at a local synagogue in Westchester; Tom, who was raised Catholic and is clearly not a joiner, remained on the sidelines. At the synagogue, Amy met Zach Zirsky, who Tom describes as “the kind of guy who danced with all the old ladies and little pigtailed girls at a bar mitzvah, so he could also put his arm around the pretty mothers and nobody would complain.”

After the affair came out, Tom and Amy decided to stay together for the kids: a boy named Michael and his younger sister, Miriam. But, Tom tells us “I also made a deal with myself. When Miriam goes to college you can leave, too.” The deal, Tom says, “helped me get through the first few months … [when] we had to pretend that everything was fine.”

Twelve years have since passed and the marriage has settled back into a state of OK-ness. Miriam, now 18, is starting college in Pittsburgh and because Amy is having a tough time with Miriam’s departure, Tom alone drives her to campus.

And, once Tom drops Miriam off, he just keeps driving, westward; without explanation to us or to himself; as though he’s a passenger in a driverless car that has decided to carry him across “the mighty Allegheny” and keep on going.

The three-page scene where Tom passively melds into the trans-continental traffic flow constitutes a master class on how to write about a character who is opaque to himself. “[Y]ou don’t feel anything about anything,” Amy says early on to Tom — an accusation that’s pretty much echoed by Tom’s old college girlfriend, Jill, whom he spontaneously drops in on at her home in Las Vegas, after being out of touch for roughly 30 years.

But, if Tom is distanced from his own feelings (and vague about the “issue” he had “with a couple of students” that forced him to take a leave from teaching in law school), he’s a sharp diagnostician of other people’s behavior. What fuels this road trip is Tom’s voice — by turns, wry, mournful and, oh-so-casually, astute.

There’s a strain of Richard Ford and John Updike in Tom’s tone, which I mean as a high compliment. Take, for instance, how Tom chats to us readers about a married couple who are old friends of his and Amy’s:

[Chrissie] was maybe one of those women who derives secret energy from the troubles of her friends. Her husband, Dick, was a perfectly good guy, about six-two, fat and healthy. He worked for an online tech platform. I really don’t know what he did.

So might most of us be summed up for posterity.

As Tom racks up miles, taking detours to visit other folks out of his past, like his semi-estranged brother, his meandering road trip accrues in suspense. There’s something else he’s subconsciously speeding away from here besides his marriage. Tom tells us at the outset that he’s suffering from symptoms his doctors ascribe to long COVID: dizziness and morning face swelling so severe that daughter Miriam jokingly calls him “Puff Daddy.” Shortly after he reaches the Pacific, Tom also lands in the hospital. “Getting out of the hospital,” Tom dryly comments, “is like escaping a casino, they don’t make it easy for you.”

The canon of road trip stories in American literature is vast, even more so if you count other modes of transportation besides cars — like, say, rafts. But, the most memorable road trips, like The Rest of Our Lives, notice the easy-to-miss signposts — marking life forks in the road and looming mortality — that make the journey itself everything.

The water bubbles up hot from the earth and sunlight filters down through the branches of mighty oaks.

But before you can soak in Santa Barbara County’s highly popular Montecito Hot Springs, you’ll need to hike a little over a mile uphill, threading your way among boulders, oaks and a meandering creek. And before the hike, there are two other crucial steps: getting to the trailhead and knowing what to expect.

These rustic spring pools are about 95 miles northwest of L.A. City Hall, just upslope from well-to-do Montecito, whose residents include Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Though the trail and hot springs are part of Los Padres National Forest, the trailhead is in a residential neighborhood of gated mansions. Beyond the trailhead parking area (which has room for eight or nine cars), the neighborhood includes very little curbside parking. After visitation surged during the pandemic, some neighbors were accused by county officials of placing boulders to obstruct public parking. Parking options were reduced further when county officials added parking restrictions earlier this year.

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Bottom line: Unless you can arrive on a weekday between 8 and 10 a.m., you’re probably better off taking a rideshare service to get there. Whenever you arrive, you’re likely to have company. And you might want to wait until the landscape dries out a bit from the rains of recent weeks.

As Los Padres National Forest spokesman Andrew Madsen warned, “the foothills of Santa Barbara are especially fragile and hiking is especially precarious in the aftermath of heavy rains.”

All that said, the hike is rewarding and free. From the Hot Springs Canyon trailhead at East Mountain Drive and Riven Rock Road, it’s a 2.5-mile out-and-back trail to the hot springs, with about 800 feet of altitude gain on the way.

Arriving at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, I got the last parking spot at the trailhead, stepped past the signs forbidding parking before 8 a.m. or after sunset, then stepped past another sign warning that “this is a challenging and rugged hike.” Also, there are no bathrooms or trash cans on the trail or at the springs.

“It’s important that people know what’s going on up there before they show up,” said Madsen. “It’s not all that glamorous.”

Even though it’s only 1.2 or 1.3 miles to the hot springs, plan on about an hour of uphill hiking. Once you’re above the residential lots, you’ll see pipes along the way, carrying water down the hill, along with occasional trailside poison oak. As you near the pools, you’ll pick up the scent of sulfur and notice the water turning a strange bluish hue. Then the trail jumps across the creek — which I initially missed.

But there was a silver lining. That detour gave me a chance to admire the stone ruins of a hotel that was built next to the springs in 1870s. After a fire, it became a private club. Then it burned in the Coyote fire of 1964, which blackened more than 65,000 acres, destroyed more than 90 homes and killed a firefighter. The hot springs and surrounding land have been part of Los Padres National Forest since 2013.

Hikers look west from the ruins near Montecito Hot Springs.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

On a clear day with the sun in the right place, you can stand among the overgrown ruins, look west and see the ocean, a few old oil platforms and the long, low silhouette of Santa Cruz Island. This is what the native Chumash would have seen (minus the oil platforms) through the many years they used the springs before European immigrants arrived.

Pleasant as that view was, I was ready to soak, as were the two couples who got momentarily lost with me. (We were all Montecito Hot Springs rookies.) Once we’d retraced our steps to the creek and crossed it, the trail took us quickly past a hand-lettered CLOTHING OPTIONAL sign to a series of spring-fed pools of varying temperatures.

A dozen people were already lazing in and around the uppermost pools (one woman topless, one man bottomless), but several pools remained empty. I took one that was about 2 feet deep and perhaps 90 degrees. In one pool near me sat Ryan Binter, 30, and Kyra Rubinstein, 26, both from Wichita, Kan.

Hikers Ryan Binter and Kyra Rubinstein, visiting from Wichita, Kan., soak at Montecito Hot Springs.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

“She found this,” said Binter, praising Rubinstein’s internet search savvy.

At the next pool were Emanuel Leon, 20, of Carpinteria, Calif., and Evelyn Torres, 19, of Santa Barbara. The last time they’d tried this hike, they’d strayed off-track and missed the hot springs, so this time, they were savoring the scene.

“Revenge!” said Leon, settling in.

The soaking was so mellow, quiet and unhurried that I was surprised to learn that the pools were not erected legally. As Madsen of the Los Padres National Forest explained later by phone, they were “created by the trail gnomes” — hikers arranging rocks themselves to adjust water flow and temperature, with no government entities involved.

Legal or not, they made a nice reward after the hike uphill. The downhill hike out was easier and quicker, of course, but still tricky because of the rocks and twisting trail.

On your way out of Montecito, especially if it’s your first time, take a good look at the adobe-style grandeur of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church building, which looks like it was smuggled into California from Santa Fe. For food and drink, head to Coast Village Road (the community’s main drag) or the Montecito Village Shopping Center on East Valley Road. Those shops and restaurants may not match the wonder and comfort of a natural bath in the woods, but for civilization, they’re not bad.