Iâm a serial memoirist (two published, two more to come), and a true fan of well-written memoir. I read all kinds, but my favorites often combine coming-of-age with unusual travel or life choices. I love getting inside the authorsâ heads, discovering not just what they did, but why, and how they felt about it later, and what came next. Great memoirs take us out of our own lives and into settings, situations, and perspectives we may never experience. What better way to understand how other people live and move and think and feel? Fiction is fine, but a unique true story hooks me from start to finish.
Following a newbie on her first big adventure always thrills me, and Meaghanâs account of riding her bike from northern BC to Baja, Mexico, accompanied by her equally inexperienced sister, brought me back to my own bicycle travels, 30 years earlier.
What changed, and what remained the same? We shared many of the same struggles: fear of bears and bicycle breakdowns, for starters, and trusting the road to whip our bodies into shape.
Traveling with a cell phone and online access to couch surfing were luxuries I couldnât have imagined in 1978, but clocking the miles still mightily tests body, spirit, and a tight budget.
Meaghan is funny and vulnerable, engaging the senses in every aspect of her learn-as-you-go odyssey along the Pacific Coast.Â
South Away follows Meaghan Marie Hackinen and her sister in the adventure of a lifetime: bicycling from Terrace, BC down the West Coast to (almost) the tip of the Baja Peninsula. Along the way Hackinen battles with the elements in Vancouver Islandâs dense northern forests and frigid Mexican deserts; encounters strange men, suicidal highways and monster trucks; and makes some emergency repairs as tires and spokes succumb to the ravages of the journey. Luckily, the pair meet some good people along the way and glean some insight about the kindness of strangers.
This engrossing memoir drops us into the heart of Zambia as the authorâanother novice on a big adventureâevolves into an unflappable hut-dweller, dealing bravely and humorously with the absolute unfamiliarity of her Peace Corps assignment.Â
Intrepid and disarming, Christine is the only muzungu (white person) in her villageâtall, blonde, and frequently klutzy, her misadventures on full display to her curious neighbors. I fell in love with the author and her quest to overcome even the thorniest cultural challenges, all related in present tense so weâre right there with her.
My own African adventure unfolded many years earlier in the urban jungle of Lagos, so this is a captivating account of an entirely different African experience.
An outstanding new voice in memoir, Christine Herbert takes the reader on a âtime-machine tourâ of her Peace Corps volunteer service as a health worker and educator from 2004â2006 in Zambia. Rather than a retrospective, this narrative unfolds in the present tense, propelling the reader alongside the memoirist through a fascinating exploration of a life lived âoff the grid.â
At turns harrowing, playful, dewy-eyed and wise, the authorâs heart and candor illuminate every chapter, whether she is the heroine of the tale or her own worst enemy. Even at her most petulant, the laugh-out-loud humor scuppers any âwhite saviorâ mentalityâŠ
Nick and Lesley Albert yearn to leave the noise, stress and pollution of modern Britain and move to the countryside, where the living is good, the air sweet, with space for their dogs to run free.
Suddenly out of work and soon to be homeless, they set off in searchâŠ
I discovered this book years ago on a discount table, and it quickly became one of my all-time favorites, a memoir Iâve reread several times and loaned to friends.
Gilman and her college friendâsomeone she knows, but not reallyâbackpack through China in 1986, right after itâs been opened to travelers after the Cultural Revolution.
Two naive Americans, in way over their heads as things grow stranger and stranger. Described as âa modern heart of darkness filled with Communist operatives, backpackers, and pancakes,â her story is guaranteed to shock and surprise even the most seasoned traveler.
Great title, great writing, and an absolute page-turner.
In 1986, Susie and her friend Chloe, fresh-faced graduates from Brown University, were inspired by a placemat entitled "Pancakes of Many Nations" to depart on an epic trip around the world, starting with Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China, then only recently opened to the rest of the world. As the two ventured into what turned out to be a strange and alien land, they encountered places far different from anything they had ever experienced, from the horrors of an open-ditch toilet in the back of a weird hybrid tenement hotel, to a magical boat ride through aâŠ
I lived in Lagos for four years in the early â90s and have struggled ever since to describe the strange energy and appeal of this troubled, oft-maligned country.
Noo, a British-raised Nigerian, takes us to 12 Nigerian locations in a quest to understand her roots. Her childhood memories of visits to the homeland werenât great, and sheâs highly attuned to the widespread corruption that afflicts almost every aspect of Nigerian life.
Still, she travels with an open mind, asking questions, seeking mini-adventures, and falling in love-and-exasperation with the loud, outspoken, resilient residents of Africaâs most-populated country.
Her lively account, packed with nuggets of history, culture, and one-of-a-kind encounters and conversations, brought me back to a country that stole my heart when I least expected it. Such a treat!
Malcolm Before X is about finding a way to continue moving forward after everything has been taken from you. While in prison, Malcolm Little discovered the power of reading and found a way to transform his character and become a better man. This half-biography focuses on that transformation, especially hisâŠ
Would you follow a person you just met into a whole new wilderness life?
Thatâs exactly what young Pamela does, discarding urban living to ride horseback into the wilds of Hellâs Canyon and partner with her new man as wandering shepherds.
Her risk pays offâunexpectedly, delightfullyâand Pamela takes us on a journey of discovery, lyrically describing the beauty and richness of her unusual life. The author and I are the same age, and as she was learning survival skills, I was cycling solo on backroads not far from herâas the crow flies. But our lives since then couldnât be more different.
If youâve ever imagined leaving it all for the simple life (with hardships), hereâs a sumptuous memoir that takes you there. Like Pamela, you may never want to leave.
In the early seventies, some of us were shot like stars from our parentsâ homes. This was an act of nature, bigger than ourselves. In the austere beauty and natural reality of Hellâs Canyon of Eastern Oregon, one hundred miles from pavement, Pam, unable to identify with her parentâs world and looking for deeper pathways has a chance encounter with returning Vietnam warrior Skip Royes. Skip, looking for a bridge from survival back to connection, introduces Pam to the vanishing culture of the wandering shepherd and together they embark on a four-year sojourn into the wilderness. From the back ofâŠ
A restless child of the 1960s, Marilyn yearns for love, hippiedom, and escape from her motherâs control. At 14, she runs away, eventually landing in a Catholic home for troubled girls. At 16, sheâs on her own. When she falls in love with Jack, the grad student next door, life finally seems perfect. They embark on a cross-continental bicycle trip to South America, but halfway there, tragedy strikes. Utterly shattered, Marilyn does the hardest thing she can imagine: a solo bicycle trip, part tribute, part life test. But she goes wildly off course, chasing her heart as she falls into a series of tragicomic rebounds. Two itinerant years later, a chain of events in Montanaâs Bitterroot Mountains leads to a peace she never expected to find.
A Last Survivor of the Orphan Trains
by
Victoria Golden,
Four years old and homeless in 1930, William Walters climbed aboard one of the last American Orphan Trains, and, without knowing it, embarked on an extraordinary path through nine decades of U.S. history.
For 75 years, Orphan Trains transported 250,000 children from the East Coast into homes in the emergingâŠ
