How Far is the Ocean From Here by Amy Shearn

I have been recommending this book to my students as the anti-Juno. Protagonist Susannah Prue has agreed to be the surrogate mother for a young couple, but as the due date approaches she flees to the Texas-New Mexico border and stays at the Thunder Lodge. There she meets the rest of the cast of oddball characters, two of whom she kidnaps and takes on the rest of her pilgrimage to the ocean. Madcap and dangerous - I liked it well enough to call it a great end of the summer read.