How Do You Travel?
I wonder how you enjoy traveling these days. Maybe you travel by car, boat, or plane. But you can also open books, a simple and inexpensive way to experience other times and places. Ipso-presto you are there!
During October, I’ve traveled to Maryland, Pennsylvania, and to the Alaskan wilderness via the written word.
Setting: 2012-2015, Annapolis, Maryland, USA
Sybil Van Antwerp is petite. At 5” 1’ she is diminutive, but her huge personality overflows in the pages of Virginia Evans’ novel, The Correspondent (2025). Sybil is the correspondent in Evans’ book, a tour de force as an epistolary novel. Sybil admits that “the clerkship was my job; the letters amount to who I am.” (122)
Sybil, Evans’ heroine, writes letters in long-hand to relatives, a lover, and others she has drawn into her sphere of influence. As a bibliophile, she writes to authors she admires, including Joan Didion and Ann Patchett. Readers will notice that Sybil becomes more self-aware as she ages, evaluating her relationships to her deceased husband and daughter with whom she has been at odds. Life has dealt Sybil some hard blows: the fraught death of a son, divorce from her husband, and failing eyesight, yet still she sallies forth with true grit and good humor and gutsiness, eventually traveling to Europe to visit a sister with steady companion and neighbor, Theodore.
Published by Random House, this novel is hailed as “an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love.”
Attorney, wife, mother, and friend, Sybil’s life is writ large in letters. I laughed, I cried, and you will too, dear reader.
Setting: 1920s, Alaskan frontier
Step into a magical world of beauty, pain, and hope in novelist Eowyn LeMay Ivey’s The Snow Child (2012). Behold a fairy tale come to life, the story of a snow child gone north to the mountains, where the snow never melts and who returns in winter to homesteaders, Jack and Mabel, in their little cottage near the village.
Early in the novel, Ivey introduces us to the once-privileged Mabel, now childless and bereft, whose nightmarish dreams of snowflakes and naked babies melt into images, whimsical and strange in the light of day. Her husband Jack, fights the land that feeds them, is physically subdued by it, but finally finds healing in the wilderness, feeding off the energy of benevolent neighbors, the sturdy George and Esther Benson. Weather often reveals the emotional state of the characters including the sometimes-stormy Garrett, farmer, carpenter, and surrogate son to Mabel and Jack.
As time passes in the 1920s wilderness, through Mabel we learn the power of faith: “Mabel only had to wish and believe. You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact she had come to suspect the opposite, regarding Faina, the snow child she is certain will return.” Mabel is creative: she sows seeds of cabbage, onions, and potatoes in the soil, sews a fine coat for the child as she fashions pencil drawings of her daily life in her sketchbook.
Eowyn Ivey’s prose is poetic—and gorgeous, especially as she describes the wild, Alaskan terrain: “Everything was sparkled and sharp, as if the world were new, hatched that very morning from an icy egg. Willow branches were cloaked in hoarfrost, waterfalls encased in ice, and the snowy land speckled with the tracks of a hundred wild animals: red-backed voles, coyotes and fox, fat-footed lynx, moose and dancing magpies.” (245)
The author herself is a daughter of the snow and land—Alaskan to the bone. Born and raised in Alaska, where she now still lives with her husband and daughters. Her story is framed by her recollection of a fairy-tale book, where she reads on the marbled endpaper: Snegurochka, 1857, a Russian tale from her childhood telling the story of a snow child.
I’ve never read a story quite like this one, and I agree with one reviewer who remarks of this stunning Pulitzer-Prize Finalist: “If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book, The Snow Child would be it.”
One of three Illustrations highlighting the novel’s three parts
About my blog title
Armchair anthropology traditionally means studying cultures without direct fieldwork, instead relying on second-hand accounts and reports from other travelers. The phrase is often used disparagingly.
Here, I’m using a more elastic definition: enjoying other cultures in different times and places without leaving home. I love travel and have recorded the joys and travails of our trips to Canada and Europe. But I enjoy escaping the here and now opening pages of print or Kindle books.
Some of my author friends have been busy publishing books this year. Here they are in alphabetical order with links.
Robbie Cheadle And the Grave Awaits (2024) on my Kindle, but you can find her more recent books here.
Darlene Foster (October 2025) Amanda in Ireland The Body in the Bog
Liz Gauffreau (October 2025) The Weight of Snow and Regret
Debby Gies (October 2025) About the Real Stages of Grief: A Journey Through Loss
Merril Smith (October 2025) Held Inside the Folds of Time
Melodie Miller Davis will publish A Place in the Fold in November 2025
How Do You Travel?
What Other Books Do You Think Readers Here Would Enjoy?
Good morning, Marian! Thank you for the reviews and for the shoutout about my new poetry collection!
I do travel through time and space in my reading and writing.
I don’t particularly enjoy the process of traveling for real–long rides, having to arrange pet care, etc. I’d love a transporter though to visit other places. 😊
You’re welcome, Merril.
Thanks for the many ways your travel and make your readers privy to journeys at home and in a wider world. My daughter has to arrange cat care when they travel; it’s a bother but I think she’s found a reliable one for now. 😀
You’re welcome, too, Marian! 😊
I love the idea of armchair anthropology! I now realize I have been doing this since I was a young girl, growing up on a farm with no opportunities to travel. You read a couple of great books too. You are the second person in as many days to mention The Snow Child. It is on my TBR list. Thank you so much for mentioning Amanda in Ireland with all the other awesome books. Happy reading.
Your travels have taken you far and wide–literally and via books.
“There’s no frigate like a book,” says Emily Dickinson. So very true! 😀
Thanks for the travel via books. I am doing literal travel right now, writing these words in Senaca Falls, NY, before we head downstairs for breakfast at our BnB. One of my favorite ways to travel is to combine my reading with the places that produced their authors. Yesterday I read the Declaration of Sentiments from the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in this place and then walked down the street to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s home.
What a perfect way to learn, seeing first hand what you are reading about. You may be enjoying more fall foliage as well. We hope to travel next year to see some eastern European countries we’ve not yet visited. Thanks for the inspiration here, Shirley. 😀
Hi Marian, I love the title of this post. I have been experiencing life through books since I was four years old. I wouldn’t have survived Covid lockdowns without my books and reading. Thank you so much for the shout out. It is much appreciated. Hugs.
Robbie, you certainly were an early reader, at four creating worlds in your imagination. I’m happy to list you here with other authors. Always a pleasure! 😀
Great post, Marian! Love the power of stories to transport a reader to different places. And congrats to Merril for the poetry collection.
I am still reading Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace. It is a great look at the environment that fosters creativity. I need to get a novel going at some point. This summer I read a lot of books for an award. Lots of good fantasy books.
You are widely read and enormously creative, L. Marie.
Kudos for the award–and for faithfully joining our conversation here twice a month. 😀
Thanks for introducing me to some lovely books before the winter season sets in, Marian! I’ve been an armchair traveler all my life and enjoy being transported into another world. Just finished three books by three local writers, all Mennonite: Miriam Toews, David Bergen and Brittany Penner.
Sisters again in the reading world!
I am not familiar with the Canadian authors Bergen and Penner, but should check into their work. I have read several books by Miriam Toews and admire her work but find some of it rather gritty. My favorite so far is a memoir of her dad. She speaks so eloquently for him in Swing Low: A Life. I believe it is her truest work and her kindest—a tribute to her gifted father, bound in shackles of bipolar disorder. Thanks for the suggestions, Elfrieda! 😀
Thank you for the shout-out for The Weight of Snow and Regret, Marian! I am definitely an armchair anthropologist. (No airplanes involved!) I’m going to recommend a nonfiction work of armchair anthropology that I think readers would enjoy: Fortune’s Frenzy: A California Gold Rush Odyssey by Eilene Lyon. It tells the stories of actual ordinary people involved in the Gold Rush and how their quest for gold affected the families left behind. The major sources for these experiences are letters written by the various people involved, including Lyon’s own ancestors.
You’re welcome, Liz!
Thanks for the recommendation of author Eilene Lyon and the Gold Rush. I will have to check her out when my TBR pile gets a little smaller–ha! I take it her work is not epistolary but sourced from letters.
Best wishes on continued success with The Weight of Snow and Regret! 😀
You’re welcome, Marian! My TBR has gotten so out of control that I have on one of my To-Do lists to record all of the books I need to read and review because I’ve forgotten some of them. Fortune’s Frenzy is a combination of historical research and letters.
Thanks for the follow-up, Liz.
You have been super busy, so understand using a list to keep track of your TBR. 😀
You’re welcome, Marian.
I have been a voracious reader since the age of 3, and feel it is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves. As a writer by passion [poetry and observances of life], reading others’ life stories and their environments have always fascinated me.
Never one for extended traveling, even those days are severely limited now, being on daily dialysis. Escaping the quietness of our little rural town, through the eyes and words of those who bravely have set down their lives in pages, is a guilty pleasure.
Reading at three–that’s amazing, Ginger.
You are right: expressing the intent of authors, “who bravely have set down their lives in pages.” Thank you for commenting here amid your health challenges. I always appreciate hearing from you! 😀
I am increasingly interested in novels–when longer ago I read mostly non-fiction books–or magazine articles. And big hugs to you for including the upcoming novel I’ve had the pleasure of writing–it was fun, and making things up as I went! And thank you again for your kind review.
Now, travel, it has its up and downs, yes? While overall I enjoy it and look forward to it, there are often travel dangers, misplacing things, difficulties sleeping, surprises. We are grateful for safe travels and watchful for traffic–and deer during this fall season! Blessings….
You’re welcome, Melodie! I’m glad you enjoyed making things up as you went along. I’m a memoir writer with forays into snippets of flash fiction and haiku.
I agree, travel has its ups and downs. We are looking forward to a cruise next year. Unpack once and enjoy the ride. 😀
I just finished The Correspondent after it was recommended to me by a friend. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it at first, but I was shedding tears by the end of the novel. As someone who still likes to write letters by hand, I loved it!
Thanks for the endorsement of The Correspondent. And for sending real letters in the mail too, a rare thing these days. Cliff just sent off an art-decorated birthday card to his sister. (I buy the card)! 😀
I love everthing about this post, Marian! From the hysterical Ann Landers quote (truth!) to your support of fellow authors who have published this year and to your book recommendations. I think they both sound truly intriguing. You happen to know that I love fairy tales, so The Snow Child sounds perfect for me. And interestingly, I recently hand-wrote a 2-page sympathy letter to a cousin I don’t know that well because I wanted to “honor” his mother who liked to write me now and again. (She was 99 when she passed.) He responded (by email) with a grateful thank you that I hand wrote something to him. That was cool. So, exploring The Correspondent sounds like a great idea. Thanks!! 😀
You are a wonderful correspondent, Melanie. That cousin will never forget your thoughtfulness, such a kind gesture to go the extra mile. And he responded too. Cool!
You would love both books I reviewed. They will put you in a different world, as all good books do. Thanks for sharing all this, Melanie! 😀
Not much time for reading here, unfortunately, but we have been staying put at a relatively comfortable campground in Paraguay for three weeks, before hitting the road again big time: crossing Argentina and the South American continent to Chile again soon…
I understand that it’s hard to read on the go. But I have noticed you often meet up with friends, a good thing to have social connections. I haven’t heard too much about selling your van, but I hope it happens soon.
It’s great to hear from you again, Liesbet! 😀