Why am I passionate about this?

My father introduced me to the world as we paged through his old pre-WWII atlas. We traced borders and rivers with our fingers and he spoke names that were magical incantations and invitations to a world more exciting and mysterious than our midwestern home. As a reader, I was drawn to books about travel and as a budding writer, I was inspired by the adventures of “Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter” featured in the Sunday comics of my youth. I packed my bags early and my passport is never out of date. I continue to read traveloirs, and I write in my journal every day. Oh! The places I will go. 


I wrote

When Your Heart Says Go: My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness

By Judy Reeves,

Book cover of When Your Heart Says Go: My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness

What is my book about?

What sort of mad longing leads a woman—nearing fifty and recently widowed—to sell everything, buy an around-the-world ticket, and set…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone

Judy Reeves Why did I love this book?

With this “traveloir,” Mary Morris showed me how to do it: How to travel alone as a single woman when you didn’t have a plan or an agenda; how to write about people and places that bring them alive; how to find your own story in your travels and in your writing.

Mary Morris published this book in 1989, the year before I set off on my own—a (much older) single woman traveling without a plan or agenda. As I opened the yellowed pages again, after many years, I read this line: “I settled into loneliness once again.” Next year I’ll be traveling to San Miguel de Allende, one of the settings in Nothing to Declare. I may take this book with me and read it again. 

By Mary Morris,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Nothing to Declare as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Chronicling her travels throughout Central America, the author offers an unvarnished view of the precarious realitie's of everyday life in a harsh and ruthless land


Book cover of Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Judy Reeves Why did I love this book?

Suleika Jaouad’s memoir, the most recent travel memoir I’ve read, is about a woman traveling the world alone, though Suleika traveled with her dog, Oscar.

She set off on in a van a 15,000-mile road trip across the country to meet some of the people who had written letters to her during her years in the hospital in treatment for leukemia and a bone marrow transplant.

Like me, Suleika had a dream of being a writer, in her case a war correspondent. The journey she set out on was also one of healing that began with the question: How would she reenter the world and live again. 

She continues to inspire me through her life and her writing as she brings connection, love, and wonder to the world through “Isolation Journals,” which I receive in my inbox regularly.

By Suleika Jaouad,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Between Two Kingdoms as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New…


Book cover of Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story

Judy Reeves Why did I love this book?

This is a dual memoir and each woman is on a quest to redefine herself. Sue Monk Kidd as a writer and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor as she asks the age-old question: “what to do with my life.” 

Written in alternating chapters, mother and daughter write of their experiences and insights as they visit sacred sights in ancient lands, places rich with myth and legend and the sacred feminine. My journey too was as a seeker, a woman thick with an urgency to write as Sue was, and as a single woman exploring “now what?” 

While I traveled alone and these women traveled together, each of us was on our own individual journey, exploring, discovering, asking questions, and seeking answers that can often only be found when we travel within.

By Sue Monk Kidd, Ann Kidd Taylor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Traveling with Pomegranates as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The New York Times bestselling memoir of pilgrimage and self-discovery by Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings, and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor

Sue Monk Kidd has touched the hearts of millions of readers with her beloved novels and acclaimed nonfiction. Now, in this wise and engrossing dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, chronicle their travels together through Greece and France at a time when each was on a quest to redefine herself and rediscover each other.

As Sue struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a…


Book cover of Eat Pray Love

Judy Reeves Why did I love this book?

Of course, Eat, Pray, Love. This memoir is iconic and beloved; a book translated into more than thirty languages, and a bestseller with good reason.

Almost any woman alone and seeking “everything,” can find herself here. With humor and insight and damn good writing, Elizabeth Gilbert takes us along in her year-long search for herself and her desperate need for change. 

The questions: who am I and what matters to me echo loudest after a devasting loss. Gilbert’s losses were threefold: a divorce, a depression, and a failed love affair. Mine was the death of my husband and the discarding of a life-long career. 

With Gilbert as our curious and courageous guide, we eat in Italy, we seek transcendence in India, and we find a wise teacher, oh and love, in Bali.

By Elizabeth Gilbert,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Eat Pray Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

_________________ OVER 15 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE _________________ 'Eat, Pray, Love has been passed from woman to woman like the secret of life' - Sunday Times 'A defining work of memoir' - Sunday Telegraph 'Engaging, intelligent, and highly entertaining' - Time _________________ It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own…


Book cover of Traveling with Ghosts: A Memoir

Judy Reeves Why did I love this book?

While on a summer backpacking trip with her fiancé, twenty-eight-year-old Shannon Fowler’s life was suddenly and irreparably altered when her fiancé was stung and killed by a box jellyfish on the remote shore of an island in Thailand. In an effort to save her own life, to discover how to go on, she turned to traveling the world. 

In rich detail, heart-breakingly honest prose, and deeply intimate story-telling, Shannon takes us along as she journeys to some of the most grief-stricken and tragic sites in the world. It’s through her travels, her interactions with strangers, her explorations that she begins to heal. 

This story and Shannon’s unflinching telling gave me courage as I wrote my memoir—courage to open my heart not just to my own grief but to my personal connection to the ceaseless grief in our world.

By Shannon Leone Fowler,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Traveling with Ghosts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A cross between H is for Hawk and Wild' Stylist
'A courageous memoir of love and loss . . . compelling' Sunday Express
'Intimate and inspiring' Observer
'Rich and absorbing' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love
'A brave and necessary record of love, as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth

On a warm evening on a beautiful beach in Thailand, Shannon Leone Fowler's life was shattered when a box jellyfish - the most venomous animal in the world - wrapped itself around her fiance Sean's legs, stinging and killing him in minutes.

Devastated…


Explore my book 😀

When Your Heart Says Go: My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness

By Judy Reeves,

Book cover of When Your Heart Says Go: My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness

What is my book about?

What sort of mad longing leads a woman—nearing fifty and recently widowed—to sell everything, buy an around-the-world ticket, and set off alone on a year-long journey without a plan or agenda? When Your Heart Says Go answers that question. 

Set in 1990-91, Judy Reeves’s story takes readers through eleven European countries, the then-Soviet Union, and India. Explorations and interactions with strangers are interspersed with flashbacks to life with her husband, his illness, and death. The outer journey serves as a container for the inner; the more Judy experiences of the world, the more she learns about herself—and the closer she gets to realizing her lifelong dream of being a writer as she struggles to find her way as a single, independent woman.

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Book cover of All They Need to Know

Eileen Goudge Author Of All They Need to Know

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Baker

Eileen's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

On the run from her abusive husband, Kyra Smith hits the road. Destination unknown. With a dog she rescued in tow, she lands in the peaceful California mountain town of Gold Creek and is immediately befriended by an openhearted group of women who call themselves the Tattooed Ladies. They’re there for Kyra—and for each other.

The maternal Frannie is a tattoo artist struggling with a troubled daughter. Suzy is a self-described fashionista grandma bearing a painful estrangement from her son. Then there’s Jo, whose storybook marriage is shadowed by a grim medical diagnosis. And bookstore owner Marisol. She longs for…

All They Need to Know

By Eileen Goudge,

What is this book about?

A woman escaping a violent past finds new friendships, romance, and tenuous sanctuary in an emotionally gripping novel by New York Times bestselling author Eileen Goudge.

On the run from her abusive husband, Kyra Smith hits the road. Destination unknown. With a neglected dog she rescued in tow, she lands in the peaceful California town of Gold Creek and is immediately befriended by an openhearted group of women called the Tattooed Ladies Club. They're there for Kyra-and for each other.

The maternal Frannie is a tattoo artist struggling with a troubled daughter. Suzy is a self-described fashionista grandma bearing a…


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