PATAGONIAN ROAD
Spanning four seasons, ten countries, three teaching jobs, and countless buses, PATAGONIAN ROAD chronicles one woman’s journey from Guatemala to Argentina. In her struggles with language, romance, culture, service, and homesickness, McCahill personifies a growing culture of women for whom travel is not a path to love but to meaningful work, rare inspiration, and profound self-discovery.
From a classroom in a Quito barrio to a dingy room in an El Salvadorian brothel, and from the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires to the heights of the Peruvian Andes, PATAGONIAN ROAD proves a testament to courage, solitude, and the rewards of taking risks.
“Vivid . . . insightful. . . A beautiful debut.” —Kirstin Valdez Quade, author, The Five Wounds and Night at the Fiestas
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“Debut author McCahill measures her yearlong memoir on the Patagonian Road in seasons and countries…this welcome (and timely) call to explore foreign borders as well as our own comfort zones is highly recommended.” —Benjamin Malczewski, Library Journal
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“This is a compelling addition to the growing gengre of solo travelogues by women who end their journeys stronger, more self-aware, and more connected to the world.” —Emily Dziuban, Booklist
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“PATAGONIAN ROAD is vivid, thrilling, earnest—and, above all, empowering. You’ll find in these pages your own potential for a beautiful adventure.” —Aspen Matis, author, Girl in the Woods
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“McCahill writes as much about the inner changes wrought by travel as she does about the landscapes and people of the places she visited…This is poetic writing, spare and deep, that unashamedly plumbs the depths of the solitary heart as it is pried open to learn that “it is in feasting on the unknown that we come to know ourselves.” —Kristine Morris, Foreword Magazine, Spotlight Review
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“The story of a young woman’s year-long trip through the long and winding highways, foot-paths, city streets and dusty back roads of Central and South America, Patagonian Road reminded me of my own journeys and made me pine for the ones I never had…I lived and breathed every place this book touched down and when I turned the last page my heart ached for the journey’s end.” —Robin MacArthur, author, Half Wild: Stories
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“Elegantly written and beautifully observed, McCahill’s journey takes her across mountains and cities, into the reaches of culture and history, and into the self…a treat for the reader who need not buy a ticket but only open its pages to be transported.” —Miriam Sagan, author, Black Rainbow and Searching for a Mustard Seed: One Young Widow’s Unconventional Story
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“Patagonian Road is a millennial’s adventure story, roughing it in the age of Skype and cell phones,through a Latin America still in recovery from decades of revolution, American meddling, and authoritarian misrule.” —Douglas Glover, author, Elle, and editor, Numéro Cinq
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“The narrative tension of this beautifully written book is the taking in so much of the world while fighting forgetfulness. Forging a supple language of remembrance, McCahill announces: ‘You are alive, a voice inside me says, and the words fill me.’ Her words fill us as well, on this journey that unfolds as a series of unexpected gifts.” —Philip Graham, author of The Moon, Come to Earth: Dispatches from Lisbon and The Art of the Knock
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“PATAGONIAN ROAD offers the steady, fragrant blossiming of a life well lived and of a writer making her home on the page.” —Michele Murano, author, Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain
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Purchasing PATAGONIAN ROAD
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