What makes this a feat of more than passing interest for Prague readers is the book's local connection. Neufeld worked at The Prague Post for most of 1993, and a portion of his book is set here and points further east. While most of the stories recount his travels through southeast Asia, the pages devoted to a "Beef Stew" reading and hopscotching through apartments in Prague will strike familiar notes for American expats in particular.

The book starts in 1992, with Neufeld and his girlfriend (now wife) Sari on a queasy flight to Bangkok with a classic 20-something travel bug: "We didn't know what we wanted — just a respite from the anarchy and confusion, some quiet time in the Thai countryside."

This leads to a six-month excursion through southeast Asia that encompasses all manner of strange people and settings: a back-country cave in Thailand; a Buddhist festival on the Laotian border where a missionary family from America has established a weird suburban enclave; an organic farm in Malaysia; and a television soap opera in Singapore, where Josh and Sari get work as extras. "Yes, OK. We need two Caucasians," the casting director says when he sees them. "And one Negro."

Neufeld's accessible drawing style and keen eye for details bring it all to life in a manner that is at once exotic and familiar. The reaction shots as he sweats his way through uncomfortable Jesus moments with the missionary hearken all the way back to E. C. Segar's classic "Popeye" strips. The one-page travel tip on "How to Squat" is about as far removed from modern plumbing as you can get, though will prove invaluable for anyone who ever finds himself answering nature's call in southeast Asia.

Though it was published (with the help of a Xeric grant) just last year, A Few Perfect Hours has been in gestation since 1995, when Neufeld began drawing selected stories from his travels. He had no overarching theme or goal in mind beyond recounting the mind-expanding effects of travel and the human bonds it forges.

On the contrary, Neufeld's "everyman" narrative style is perhaps the chief strength of the book. He and Sari are wide-eyed American innocents everywhere they go, completely open to new ideas and experiences, taking readers along on a heartfelt journey of discovery. While there are plenty of uncomfortable and even threatening moments along the way, the underlying sense of humanity and Neufeld's appreciation for the common joys and problems faced by people of all races give the book a warm tone and uncommon richness.

This reaches full bloom in the final chapter, when Neufeld is back in the United States and his grandmother dies. He relates the story of her funeral and burial as if it were another travel adventure, which it literally was. "We were still settling in a foreign environment — Chicago — which in some ways was similar to Central/Eastern Europe," he writes. "We had to travel back to New York for the funeral, and go to places I'd never been before. Then there were the strange, alienating events of the funeral itself."

It's a downbeat but thematically fitting conclusion, and in keeping with what Neufeld says he ultimately wanted to accomplish: "I hope that most of all [the book] evokes the spirit of travel, that other backpackers (present or past) find themselves relating to the emotions and events of the book, and remember how important travel is to creating a well-rounded character."