By: Angie Haddock
Nearly thirty and disconnected, Julie Haberstick was staring at an endless loop of traffic and toxic relationships. Heeding a quiet intuition, she left her fiancé, packed her life into her car, and — on October 1st, 2019 — just started driving.
Happy June! Now that the summer months are here (in the US, anyway), how about a quick road trip book?
Julie Haberstick’s journey started in California, with the rebellious act of getting all her hair cut off. She then travels east, through the Southern United States. She’s a poet at heart, and finds a few open mics, where she shares her poems out loud and meets other like-minded people. Along the way, she also picks up a ukulele.
This book is a travel journal – edited, of course. While some entries tell of her adventures, others are merely a picture or a poem.
Haberstick finds herself entranced be New Orleans, and the artsy people she meets there. She continues her journey by making her way up and down the East Coast. She has friends and family in various states here, and also some events to attend for said friends and family, so she goes back and forth some. We get to meet some members of her family, and even get a poem by her mom!
All the while, she keeps thinking back on New Orleans, though. Her original travels are supposed to take her to the end of 2019, but she tacks on another month in NOLA in January, 2020.
She decides to stay, and then the pandemic hits. This makes it hard to meet new people in her new city, but she’s already made a few good contacts. By the time October rolls around again, she’s contemplating whether or not she’s ready for commitment. But her original road trip started the previous October, and she wants to celebrate that. So she decides that her next big adventure will be a commitment, after all – and she adopts a puppy.
(For those wondering, like I was… Julie and her pup are still together, and still in New Orleans.)
I think we’ve all has those moments when we fantasize about dropping everything and starting over… right? Whether you’ve done it, or just thought about it, this short read may be your cup of tea.
I was given a copy of this book by the author, and the kind folks at the Books Forward program.
Reading Our Shelves 
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