A wedding, a VW microbus, and two years on the road. Newlyweds (an artist and an engineer) meet the rigors of travel and the ups and downs of married life in a Volkswagen microbus that continually needs repair. Surrounded by exotic backdrops from Panama to India and beset by mechanical problems, Tom and Katie drive 39,000 miles across four continents in a world before the internet or cell phones. Everything from engine trouble to personal sanitation, from running out of funds to primitive roads, affects their journey. Will their beloved green van make it to the end of the trip? Will their relationship thrive or will it crumble under the pressure of living together 24/7 in a van? "In clear, rich, personal prose and accompanied by detailedsketches, maps, and blueprints, the author opens to readers one of the mostintimate periods of her life. . . . In heartwarming portrayals of locals willing to help strangers and a young coupleready to learn the nuances of a variety of cultures, this work debunks themyths and stereotypes surrounding "nomadic" travel, unfriendly localpopulations, and "the ugly American" often associated with trips that are notreliant on traditional tourism methods. By fusing the insight of KatyaCengel's From Chernobyl with Love and the philosophicalobservance of Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of MotorcycleMaintenance , this book is guaranteed enjoyment for readers of travel essaysand travel-focused literature. - Nicole Yurcaba, US Review of Books, RECOMMENDED Review Among family and friends, I call it "the big trip" or "the honeymoontrip" and they know what I mean. For close to 50 years, I have beentelling stories from those two years of travel at dinner parties and tonew friends, but it wasn't until recently that I was ready to turn theexperience into a memoir. Luckily, I still have a treasure-trove of memoryenhancers at my disposal. Rereading my letters, poring through old travel books, recipes, andmaps, and viewing our long unseen slides off ered the delight of rediscovery.I fell in love all over again with the young Tom who captured myheart, and I could feel the person I was then looking back at me andsaying, "Yes, these were the best years of your life!" "A remarkable adventure and a delightful read." - Janice MacLeod, New York times, best-selling authro of Paris Letters and A Paris Year. ""If you've ever dreamed of a two-year camping honeymoon exploring the world, this book is a must-read. You'll experience the world as it was nearly a half century ago, traveling by van to places that are now off limits due to wars and insurgencies. Along the way you'll share special moments with a young, adventurous couple grappling with stress and emergencies, as well as celebrating the thrill of discovering the world and each other." - Georgeanne Brennan, author of A Pig in Provence-Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France. "A heartfelt and sinewy account, full of fragrant moments as Katie and Tom roam free, laying down a bed of memories to treasure and share a half a century on." - Michael Gebicki, travel writer, photogapher, and columnist at traveller.com.au Wherever the Road Leads is a joyride of a story, capturing life, love, and travel in an age when people could truly connect to each other and the world around them without an app." Meg Weidner, screenplay writer, actor, and filmaker of Best Mom. Born during World War II and raised in 1950s Southern California, Kathryn Lang-Slattery enjoyed a childhood filled with reading, drawing, and long days at the beach. College took her to Los Angeles where she studied art and English at UCLA, graduated with a BFA, and then undertook graduate work in art and education at the University of the Americas in Mexico City. In the following years she taught art, English, and cooking, travelled around the world, raised a daughter and a son, and devoted over 20 years to the Girl Scouts as a leader and community supervisor. Finally, she returned to her early love of writing. She has had stories and articles published in several highly rated magazines for the youth market, including Spider, Ladybug, Jack and Jill, Boys' Life, and Faces. In the 1990s, Lang-Slattery became fascinated with her uncle's World War II stories and began taping his memories. Soon she knew she had found a fascinating untold story of Jewish refugees who became silent heroes. More than a decade spent researching, interviewing Ritchie Boys, and turning the true story of her uncle into fiction became an odyssey of discovery that resulted in her first adult novel, Immigrant Soldier, The Story of a Ritchie Boy. "I wanted to tell this story," she says, "because it was different from any other Holocaust story I had read. The Jewish hero is not a victim, but a young man who gradually grows from a frightened and frustrated teenager, looking for a place to belong, into a confident US Army intelligence officer who struggles with the conflicting emotions of ha