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A Widow's World

by Jane Hanrahan

187 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #07-2871; ISBN 1-4251-6277-0; US$18.88, C$18.88, EUR12.90, £9.75

"Bars," "Blunders," "Islands," "Wildlife." These and similar vignettes come from some fourteen years of a homeless widow's constant travels in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Australia that began at age sixty-four.

About the Book

Full book description: From “Afloat” and “Islands” to “Bars” and “Blunders,” chapters of A Widow’s World record incidents from some fourteen years of lone international travel beginning at age sixty-four.

When her husband of forty-four years died suddenly in Ankara, leaving Jane homeless and alone, she decided to continue that year’s eleven-month itinerary from Turkey to South America, “until something else looks better.”

Neither a travel log nor a guidebook nor a how-to for widows, these vignettes from her years in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Australia appear by topics, rather than in chronological order or by their place in the world. The beginning of each experience identifies its location.

One thread of continuity through the book is the sequence of appearances of the California lawyer who meets Jane on the Red Sea and joins her on several long trips. Her only other travel-mate, a daughter, meets her briefly now and then on an island—Maldives, Galápagos, Vanuatu, Sri Lanka.

Throughout this diversity of places and events, strangers prove helpful and the world continues to astound her.

A short supplement answers eleven frequent queries about Jane’s nomadic life-style.

About the Author

When her husband retired, he and Jane sold their Maryland residence and everything in it to explore the world for a home. Having visited each of the USA’s fifty states at one time or another, they sought the challenge of a different culture. Shortly after the beginning of their fifth year’s travels, her husband died suddenly in Turkey.

Jane continued to travel eleven months a year on set itineraries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Australia. In search of conversation, she began interviewing people in the travel industry and published some twenty photo-articles in magazines. These included her experiences during two months on Malaysia’s eastern coast, three months of bus-travel on a segment of Brazil’s coast, sailing uncharted waters north of Australia and traveling the Amazon from Peru to the Atlantic mostly on small boats.

The vignettes in A Widow’s World capture personal incidents during her years of lone travel in developing countries and Australia. She now travels on shorter itineraries from her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Excerpts