"Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer...a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived." --Melissa Febos, The New York Times
Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award
"DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it's her
lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read." --The Washington
Post Vogue's Best Books of 2022
The Washington Post's Best Travel Books of 2022
Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.
Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and
ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories
that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over
quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda,
spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster
in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses
us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than
we're up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd
rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of
her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search
for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.
