First published 2022
Brianna Madia rejected the competitive path laid out before her and bought a beat-up bright orange van she named Bertha. She filled it with her two dogs, Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into Utah's canyons with her husband to seek a truer version of happiness. This memoir chronicles her journey of exploration across the deserts of the American West, from backroads to breakdowns, married life to solo travel, lost to found. Madia describes the reality behind choosing an unconventional life. The van overheated on lonely Wyoming highways. Water jugs froze beneath her bed when she slept in office parking lots during bitter cold weather. She faced tough choices, hard truths, and inevitable regrets about money, marriage, and an uncertain future. The life proved boring, exhausting, lonely, and desperate at times. But it remained a life of her choosing, and that distinction made all the difference in her pursuit of authentic happiness.
Genres: adventure, autobiography, contemporary, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, pursuit-of-happiness
Setting: Utah, Wyoming
Period: 21st-century
272 pages · Hardcover · HarperOne