“… an incredibly detailed and passionate journey … Kriete writes with drive, spinning a narrative that is both brutally honest and difficult to put down.” — The Edmonton Journal, July 27, 2021
Paradise Road
A Memoir
By Marilyn Kriete
A restless child of the 1960s, Marilyn years for love, hippiedom, and escape from her cold mother’s control. At 14, she runs nearly a thousand miles away to Vancouver, British Columbia, eventually landing herself in a Catholic home for troubled girls. At 16, she’s emancipated, navigating adulthood without a high school diploma, and craving a soulmate. When she falls in love with Jack, the grad student living next door, life finally seems perfect. The two embark on a cross-continental bicycle trip, headed for South America, but before they reach Mexico, tragedy strikes. Utterly shattered, Marilyn does the hardest thing she can imagine: a solo bicycle trip, part tribute, part life test. She conquers her fears but goes wildly off course, chasing her heart as she falls into a series of tragicomic rebounds. Two itinerant years later, a chain of events in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains leads to a peace she never expected to find. Reminiscent of Wild, Marilyn’s journey portrays a life unmoored by grief, brought to shore again.
Genre/category: Personal Memoir/Biography
Where to buy:
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933095
Paperback ISBN: 9781950495115
e-book ISBN: 9781950495160
Direct from Lucid House Publishing click here.
Print and epub available worldwide to booksellers and libraries via Ingram. Request from your favorite independent bookseller or your library.
Bookshop.org
IndieBound
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Amazon
Press release including virtual press kit: Click Here
The 15th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards named Paradise Road the winner in the Young Adult Non-Fiction category and a finalist for New Adult Non-Fiction. It was also a finalist for Book Cover Design-Non-Fiction. In the 2022 Book Excellence Awards, it was the winner in the Adventure Non-Fiction category.
Meet The Author
From Reviewers:
“… an incredibly detailed and passionate journey … Kriete writes with drive, spinning a narrative that is both brutally honest and difficult to put down.” — The Edmonton Journal, July 27, 2021
“Avoiding the often-encountered trap of memoirs becoming self-indulgent, Marilyn Kriete releases her extraordinary life with mirth, a fine tuned sense of humor, and radiantly poetic prose … Very highly recommended.” — Grady Harp, Amazon Top Reviewer
“Paradise Road is a fearless account of Marilyn Kriete’s life of adventure. She unspools the tale of plunging into each chapter of her life with great candor and momentum. She has an uncanny knack for putting the reader by her side through each exhilaration, each heartbreak, each danger, each triumph.” — Kimberley Cetron, author of Fractals: The Invisible World of Fractals Made Visible Through Theatre and Dance
“Watching Marilyn Kriete crack wide open and feel utterly wounded, only to watch her attempt to piece herself back together one mile at a time. From her happiness feeling truly ebullient to her crestfallen soul, we meet a woman furiously bicycling towards her future. Paradise Road is such a beautifully painted story, I felt as if I was with her and cheering her on the entire time.”— Annie McDonnell of The Write Review
From Readers—excerpts from Goodreads reviews:
… A pilgrimage among the most extraordinary characters through events that compete with Hollywood in their drama.
… Kriete is vulnerable, honest and engaging …
… A memorable, heartfelt, and thought-provoking memoir … a must-read …
… Men and women of all ages will find this book compelling.
… A raw but utterly compelling and sometimes dazzling memoir by a writer who had gone through far more trauma and adventure in her first 25 years than most of us go through in our lifetimes.