The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo by Babine, Karen

The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo

"A truly fascinating and heartwarming travelogue that beautifully points us in bold directions."--Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World...
$51.77 AUD
$51.77 AUD
SKU: 9781571311825
Product Type: Books
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Author: Karen Babine
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $51.77
The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo by Babine, Karen

The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo

$51.77

The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo

$51.77
Author: Karen Babine
Format: Paperback
Language: English

"A truly fascinating and heartwarming travelogue that beautifully points us in bold directions."--Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders

One woman's cross-country journey to explore the hold family history has on our lives, and the power of new stories to shape what lies ahead. In her mid-thirties and, happily single if also tied closely to a family that has long thought of her as their historian, Karen Babine hitches up her tiny Scamp camper and sets out with her two unenthusiastic cats, Galway and Maeve, on a journey from her home in Minnesota to Nova Scotia, to find explore the place where her French-Acadian ancestors settled in North America some four centuries ago.

As the miles roll by, she wonders: "Why do we carry this need to belong to an established history? What happens when that can't--or shouldn't--happen?" The road reveals more questions than answers about her history, identity, and belonging, about the responsibilities of stories and silence, about her life choices as a solo woman, where she is in life and what it means to be driven by both a strong sense of kinship to a very close-knit family and attachment to home on one hand, and a deep desire for independence on the other.

Capturing the joy, freedom, and powerful pull of the open road, The Allure of Elsewhere is about the stories we're told, the stories we tell, and the way those stories make us who we are, often in surprising ways. Intimate, curious, and candid, written with wry wit and warmth, this is a courageous and inspiring memoir.



Author: Karen Babine
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 05/20/2025
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781571311825

About the Author
Karen Babine is the two-time Minnesota Book Award-winning author of All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer and Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life and the editor of Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She is currently an UC Foundation Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.

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