Nowhere for Very Long
The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life
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4.4 • 92 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • USA TODAY! BESTSELLER
In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life.
A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband. Nowhere for Very Long is her deeply felt, immaculately told story of exploration—of the world outside and the spirit within.
However, pursuing a life of intention isn’t always what it seems. In fact, at times it was downright boring, exhausting, and even desperate—when Bertha overheated and she was forced to pull over on a lonely stretch of South Dakota highway; when the weather was bitterly cold and her water jugs froze beneath her as she slept in the parking lot of her office; when she worried about money, her marriage, and the looming question mark of her future. But Brianna was committed to living a life true to herself, come what may, and that made all the difference.
Nowhere for Very Long is the true story of a woman learning and unlearning, from backroads to breakdowns, from married to solo, and finally, from lost to found to lost again . . . this time, on purpose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Travel writer Madia recounts the highs and lows of life on the road in her quietly moving debut. As she writes, trading in just about everything for Bertha—her orange van with a "propensity for back roads and breakdowns"—made the difference between a humdrum life and a freewheeling lifestyle in which "fear was celebrated." In their early 20s, Madia and her future husband Neil left their middle-class Connecticut lives and decamped to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2012. They later took their wayfaring a step further when they began to travel full-time in Madia's van around the western U.S. and Mexico with their dogs, Dagwood and Bucket. But with the captivating grandeur of the deserts and mountains—vividly depicted in Madia's elegant prose—came the struggles of nomadic living, too: after Neil accidentally ran over Dagwood (who eventually recovered), Madia's marriage began to crack, and a couple years later they divorced, leaving the author to continue her travels solo with the dogs. Madia's insights drill deep, as does her knack for carving beauty out of pain ("Perhaps what Neil and I had was something meant to be left out in the wildest parts of the desert like the sun-bleached bones of a once-living thing"). Armchair adventurers will be inspired by this spirited story.
Customer Reviews
Loved!!
Not only a wonderful story, but amazingly written as well. Already started her next one and it is equally captivating. Have recommended to fellow book lovers!!
LOVED IT!
Brianna is such a beautiful writer, couldn’t put this book down! 🧡
Deeply felt!
Exquisitely written! This books attention to detail and the creative ability of the author to tell her stories draws you into them as if it is your own.