A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel
The Basics
- Buy the book here.
- Media, book clubs, speaker gigs, etc., email me: pam @ nerdseyeview dot com.
- Want a review copy? Request it here–scroll down to Publicity.
Read: Reviews and Interviews
Travel Writing World: I’ve linked to my Q&A on Jeremy Basetti’s site, but one of the things I like best about these kinds of Q&As is seeing how other writers answer these questions. Read mine in which I say “Most humans love a good adventure story,” but then browse the others, too.
Leah Lederman: “This memoir rocked me… Mandel’s voice strikes a curious note between intimacy and detachment as she chronicles a second, inward journey towards a sense of self-worth.”
Columbia Journal: “Though travel is an important framework for the memoir, it is also about a young woman learning, through a lot of pain and trauma, that what she sees, feels, and says matters, and how to stand up for herself.”
Publisher’s Weekly: Messy but provocative, Mandel’s chaotic coming-of-age story is emotionally hard to read, but also hard to put down.
Library Journal: This is not your usual travel memoir, but a narrative of a teen on a lonely and sometimes brutal journey to discover herself. . . . Her voice is compelling, authentic, and heartbreaking at times. . . . Young adults and college students who are considering a gap year will be interested in this cautionary coming-of-age story.
Booklist: Memoir and travelogue readers will devour this.
Undomesticated: …much more than a memoir. It’s a coming-of-age story, a travel odyssey, and an exploration of how experience shapes us.
Stuart McDonald, Travelfish: She’s talking about something she experienced almost forty years ago, yet spoke about it like it was yesterday. These are the experiences that make people love travel—and they stay with us forever.
Tim Richards, Travel Writer: Mandel’s stories – the personal narrative and the travel narrative – are ever intertwined, and not a word or sentence feels wasted… Travel is an essential element of the personal growth in this book, as it has been for so many of us, and it’s fulfilling – though painful – to follow the author’s life as the wider world finally provides the backdrop for her to figure out who she really is.
Alaska Travelgram: The Same River Twice is about travel, all right. But not about vacation travel. No, her new book is part James Michener (“The Drifters”) and part Adele (“Hello”).
Listen: Podcasts and Radio
Travel Writing World: Jeremy Basetti and I talk travel and the wonky stuff about what it means to write and sell a book. We also talk about my passion project, The Statesider. “I don’t want to give it all away, but let’s say that the adventure I embarked upon was not the goal or end result of your traditional birthright tour… on the one hand, a lot of bad things happened… on the other hand, it opened up my life long love of travel.”
Books and Travel with Joanna Penn: “They are travel that changes the way you think about the world around you. For a while, after I came back from Antarctica, I would lie in bed at night, in my dark room in Seattle and I had this image in my head of the shape of the planet and how I had been to the bottom of it. And then I thought that’s not even real.”
School for Good Living:“I think about how breakfast is this symbol of your most basic human needs getting met.” I was surprised to be invited on this podcast about, well, life, I guess? But I really enjoyed the far ranging conversation and the opportunity to talk about how breakfast is the meaning of live. There are a lot of interesting guests in the archives, if you like the format, go look for more.
Thoughful Travel with Amada Kendle: Amanda is one of those travel writer names I’ve known online just about forever; it wasn’t until we started recording I realized we’d never actually met. She’s a delight to talk with, so disarming and sincere. Explore her work and dig into her archives here.
Good People with Kelsey Timmerman: “Some things in life you can’t read about to learn. You have to experience them yourself. So when I hand my daughter “The Same River Twice,” it won’t be so that she’ll avoid Pam’s mistakes (although I hope she does) or follow Pam’s path to becoming a person I greatly admire, it’ll be so my daughter can see what growing curious, growing consciousness, growing compassion, growing ideas, growing self-reliance, and growing up look like.” This is lovely, but also, Kelsey is an exceptional human and you should follow his work. He’s one of the most ethical people I know.
Deviate with Rolf Potts: Rolf and I have overlapped in travel writing circles for at least a decade, but this is the first time we’ve had a real conversation. He’s a long haul traveler with a lot of interesting work in his portfolio (I love this series about a Star Trek cruise). He’s also a thoughtful reader and asked a lot of good questions.
Leif Pettersen Makes a Podcast: Leif and I are old friends so this conversation dispenses with formal interview style and gets right to it. Since we’re both writers, we talked a lot about writing and how it gets done. Leif has done a ton of work for Lonely Planet, but he also wrote a book called Backpacking with Dracula. It’s part travel guide, part history, and all Leif’s wry (and meticulously researched) sense of humor.
Watch: Virtual Appearances
Dope Content: Three content strategists in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Laura Bergells, Elizabeth Ratliff, and Scott Stamper) invite people to their virtual living room to talk writing, content, whatever’s on their minds. They told me I need to come see the Monument to Flouridation; they’re not wrong.
Subtext Books with Doug Mack: Doug reminded me that, after we met for the first time, I insisted he blow off his train ride and join me for the drive back from Vancouver to Seattle. We have been great friends ever since. Doug has written two travel-centric books and works on The Statesider. We could have talked all day, and indeed, I think we did the last time I saw him in person. Probably while eating carbs. Shop Subtext books here.
Personal Space with Sari Botton on LitHub: Sari has been so supportive of my work; she ran an excerpt from the book while I was still looking for a publisher, plus she published my tell not-quite-all story about what it was like to sign up for online dating. I wish I could have talked with her for much, much longer.
Sperryville Parking Lot with Andrew Evans: Andrew Evans and I have a wide ranging conversation about the 80s, the Cold War, gender roles, feminism, and how I’m kind of the anti-travel writer. Oh, and we talk about targeted underwear ads. He’s in his pickup truck outside his local cafe, I’m in my kitchen in Seattle. You do *not* need a Facebook account to watch the video, here.
Bank Square Books: Yi Shun Lai and I talk about travel, girls, sports, expectations, her much too short book, Pin Ups, representation, and a whole lot more. Yi Shun is quick witted and funny as hell and sweary and a fierce advocate for diverse voices in publishing. Shop Bank Square Books here.
Elliott Bay Books: It’s been heartbreaking to have to go virtual, especially in your home town. But my cohost was Paulette Perhach — more than one friend contacted me after this event to ask, “Who was that woman? She seems super smart!” She is, plus, she wrote a book that helps writers find their way, Welcome to the Writer’s Life. Shop Elliott Bay Books here.
Book Passage: I know Lavinia Spalding first as the editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, but she’s such a fine writer, too, and her insights in this conversation had me taking a minute to consider how she’d noticed things that I, the person who wrote the damn book, did not. Shop Book Passage here.