Passages

A Memoir of Camping and Life in Changing Times

My husband seduced me into leaving paradise with the promise of a travel trailer.

For fans of Travels with Charley, Nomadland, and readers of Freckled and Open Road, comes mystery author Toby Neal’s travel camping memoir of life at a crossroads.

I had a forever home on Maui, a marriage of more than thirty years, and no plans to leave either one. Then Mike moved to California to look after his mother, and the only thing that could get me to follow was the promise of a travel trailer and “one last big adventure.”

What came next were mountain grades white-knuckled with my dog clutched in my arms and a two-thousand-pound camper fishtailing behind. Fleeing fire but ending up trapped in a Yosemite blowup. A Wyoming night in the teens trying not to freeze with Styrofoam taped around the trailer like a hula skirt. Wild horses, elk bugling, the sound of hail on a metal roof, and the beginning of a friendship with grief. Wildfires and floods redrew our roadmap of the West—and pushed us to try to find a new home safe from climate change.

Back in Hawaii on a visit, I had a supernatural message from a golden plover on a Maui beach and returned to Kauai with my 80-year-old mother… to find the teardown jungle cottage where my first memoir ended, standing rebuilt, perfectly restored.

Sometimes things end up better than we ever hoped.

Passages follows the changes life hands us whether we’re ready or not: a mother-in-law’s passing, a husband’s retirement, becoming a grandparent, a coastline eroding, redwoods burning, and a fixer-upper on the Oregon coast bought sight unseen.

“Engrossing and relatable!” ~Advance Reader