If there is one thing that characterizes “The Golden Road: French Wine or Moonshine?” it is fun. If there is one thing that radiates from this novel, it is the joy of a great friendship.

While the story is about the unlikely friendship of two “old biddies” and their adventures on the open road, the making of the novel is a testament to the friendship of two local women — co-authors Dona (Stanley) Bakker, a native of St. Helena, and Tami (Krinke) Reideman, a former Napan. Only possible through personal closeness despite geographic separation, the writing of this novel was anything but conventional.

The collaboration took two years, although the friendship has developed over nearly a quarter of a century. Bakker and Reideman have known each other so long that Bakker’s son Jay, 25, remembers the two as “always” being friends. The two hit it off immediately after meeting in church one day in the early ’80s. The rest, as they say, is history.

When Reideman and her family moved to Oregon three years into the friendship, the two women kept things going — staying in touch via phone and visiting one another once a year. However, Reideman’s move to Oregon would prove to be a primer for an even more distant move to Minnesota.

As their friendship held after Oregon, so too it held after Minnesota. Reideman’s passion for writing began at a very young age with short stories and poetry. Bakker’s career as owner of her own secretarial service has brought her numerous books of all genres to type and edit. Working on these projects sparked in her a desire to write her first book, “Run of the Mill,” in 2004, about her life growing up at the Bale Grist Mill with her caretaker grandparents. The two friends had talked about writing together for some time, but after Bakker’s book was printed, it became more evident that it really could be done. At that point, they began a “what if” dialogue about two very zany characters.

They started the novel in January of 2005. Separated by 2,000 miles, Reideman and Bakker developed an unconventional system for writing via e-mail and phone. First, they tossed around ideas on the phone. Once the duo developed a scenario, Bakker would type it up into a chapter and e-mail it to Reideman, who would then add to the chapter and exchange synonyms (Bakker says Reidman is a “walking thesaurus”). Reideman learned not to even bother with punctuation, because she knew Bakker would change it. Once Reideman finished the chapter, the two would review its final form and repeat the process.

One inspiration for the two “old biddies,” residents of a retirement home, came from Reidman’s visits with her uncle Roy, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 100. Jay Bakker said his great-uncle jumped out at him from the page as he read his mom’s novel. For one thing, Uncle Roy was obsessed with “The Price is Right” and so is the character Bernice, the more traditional of the two friends, whose dream is to meet “Bobby” (Bob Barker).

Somehow, Bernice convinces the more untraditional Grandy to get her tickets on the Internet and come with her to see “Bobby.” The two win a motor home on the show and decide to travel the country. Once Bernice and Grandy hit the open road, it is non-stop action and comedy all the way to the last page.

Local author Tony Kilgallin (“Napa, an Architectural Walking Tour”) compares Bernice and Grandy to Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz in his back cover comments. His wife, Patricia Kilgallin, couldn’t put down the book and said, the “characters epitomize the old adage; ‘This is not the dress rehearsal but the final act.’”

Bernice and Grandy are almost complete opposites: one reserved and the other outgoing, one old-fashioned and the other hip, resilient and domineering, conventional and unconventional (respectively), while both are caring mothers in their own ways. Instead of becoming cliché, these characters come alive because Bakker and Reideman present them as rounded, complete persons — their strengths and weaknesses, cares and worries — through a sense of humor.

Do Bernice and Grandy resemble their creators? A little, Bakker explained, but she and Reideman “drew more from other people.” This process was a bit out of her “comfort zone,” Bakker said, “but it was fun.” She felt the huge differences between writing this fiction and her previous autobiographical work, the difference between making up characters and writing about real people. However, once Bakker and Reideman established concrete histories for their characters, and distinct characteristics, contradictions were solidly avoided.

Ironically, the one character in the book the two did not create was the one character in which they feared contradiction the most: Bob Barker. They did not want to misrepresent him and felt “funny” writing about “The Price is Right,” a copyrighted telecast. So, Bakker contacted the DJT Foundation (Bob Barker’s foundation for the spaying and neutering of pets) in spring 2006 to see about permission to use the show in the book. About 10 minutes after placing the call, Bob Barker’s PR man called back and was very helpful. Bakker e-mailed him the chapter in which Bernice and Grandy go to the show and he gave it to Barker, who read the work and gave the chapter a thumb’s up. What started as a funny feeling turned into a great feeling. They sent a signed copy to Bob Barker as a retirement gift.

With this hurdle passed, Reideman and Bakker continued the process of calling and e-mailing their way towards the 80,000-word total they set for their novel. At two points in the process, however, they did use the conventional method of writing — Bakker flew to Minnesota in June of 2006 and Reideman flew to California in January of 2007, both times locking themselves into a hotel room for three days.

For the next two months, Reideman and Bakker meticulously proofread their creation for consistency, and the novel was finally published on March 30. The proofreading effort shines, as the consistency of this novel is solid.

Technically, “The Golden Road” is a self-published book (though published under Bakker’s company, Pastime Publications, in much the way Mark Twain published his books through his own print business) and, therefore, it is up to the authors to sell their book. Fortunately for them, these two authors have help. Reideman’s husband, David, a truck driver, has proved to be quite the salesman while on the road. Bakker’s son Jay has sold more than 10 copies of the book over the summer at his restaurant, “Squeeze Inn Hamburgers” in Napa, displaying his mom’s book by the register.

Along the journey of writing this novel, Reideman and Bakker learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses, to work as a team — a theme seen between Bernice and Grandy. The most remarkable thing about this unique and unconventional process of writing, despite the physical distance between these two friends, is that their friendship has grown closer because of it. Bakker only wishes that the reader has as much fun reading this novel as she and Reideman had writing it.

“The Golden Road: French Wine or Moonshine” is at Copperfield’s Bookstore and Bookends in Napa, or may be ordered on the author’s Web site, www.napavalleypastime.com, or by calling 252-4062.