Life’s a journey for all of us, but these memoirists have found themselves on some very unusual travels indeed. Holly FitzGerald describes her honeymoon trip from hell in Ruthless River. After their plane crashed in Peru, the newlyweds saw no other option but to build a raft to ride the fast-moving Rio Madre de Dios to Brazil. They lived to tell the tale...but only barely. Leland Melvin’s first career involved catching passes as an NFL wide receiver, but he had loftier ambitions. He went on to serve as mission specialist on the space shuttle Atlantis and on the International Space Station. His journey to outer space is thrillingly described in Chasing Space. Andrew Forsthoefel, upon graduating from college, decided to walk across the United States as a “graduate program in the human experience.” Carrying little money and a sign reading Walking to Listen (also the title of his book), Andrew encountered incredible kindness from strangers. His walk served as a journey of discovery through the stories told to him by others and the radical acceptance that he receives and learns to give. Novelist Ayelet Waldman’s efforts to heal herself involve taking a different kind of trip. In A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, she describes using tiny doses of LSD in an effort to treat drastic mood swings after all other therapies fail. Her fascinating and at times hilarious memoir chronicles her journey down the rabbit hole of LSD use, as well as the history and mythology of the drug. These extraordinary memoirists will amaze you with their tales. Moderated by WBUR ARTery reporter Maria Garcia.
