Measured by the sheer number of miles covered, Nabokov is the most American of authors. He saw more of the United States than did Fitzgerald, Kerouac or Steinbeck, and what he saw was back-roads America: personal, intimate, ticky-tack and yet undeniably authentic. It took a Russian-born writer to awaken us to what Mark Twain knew: America is not a place; it is a road.

Nabokov went west because he was chasing butterflies. He was a passionate lepidopterist who wrote the definitive scholarly study of the genus Lycaeides and had several species named after him, such as Nabokov’s wood nymph. His travels over the years took him from the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon to Utah, Colorado and Oregon. But one of the best places to find many different species of butterflies congregating at one time was at nosebleed-high altitudes along the Continental Divide in Wyoming. Along the way the shape of the novel took root, and he started to take notes during his butterfly hunts and write them up back in his motel rooms.

So why not follow the trail of Vladimir and Véra today? Like a 21st-century version of Humbert’s nemesis, Clare Quilty, who pursued Humbert and Lolita across the country, I went west to chase Nabokov chasing butterflies and to piece together the plot of his most popular novel. It became a tale of three overlapping journeys: Humbert’s with Lolita, Vladimir with Véra, and mine with Sarah and my retriever, Mack.

The physical geographies of “Lolita” are still there — not only Humbert’s “distant mountains,” “oatmeal hills” and “relentless peaks” but also the daisy chain of Kumfy Kabins, Sunset Motels, Pine View Courts, U-Beam Cottages and Skyline Courts where Humbert took the captive Dolores Haze (Lolita’s given name). Among them are some of the same motels where Vladimir and Véra checked in more than a half-century ago.