Vertical (novel)

Vertical is a 2010 novel (also known as Sideways Oregon) by Rex Pickett and the second novel in the Sideways Series. It is a sequel to the novel Sideways, which was made into a successful 2004 film of the same name.

The novel takes place seven years after the events depicted in Sideways. It contains the same characters as in the earlier novel: Miles, a writer, his friend Jack, a sometime actor, and Miles' mother Phyllis, all wine lovers. Miles is now a successful author, having written a novel called "Shameless" with much the same situations as the real-life Sideways. Like Sideways, "Shameless" has been adapted as a successful movie. Jack, who had been prosperous in Sideways, is now divorced and short of cash. Pickett says that the character Jack is based on his friend Roy Gittens, a film electrician.

The novel recounts a road trip involving the three and a Filipina caretaker, Joy, as they head first to Oregon's Willamette Valley for the International Pinot Noir Celebration, and then to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where Phyllis is to live with her sister, Alice.

The book was self-published by Pickett. He has said that the book is autobiographical:

The trip didn't happen with Jack, but everything with my mother was real. I lived that, and Jack is that character now, he's a guy who's gone to seed. And I am a guy who's had success and overimbibed and did some things that I don't do anymore.