Have Mother Will Travel - A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves Each Other and the World

Claire Fontaine, Mia Fontaine

Summary

A mother, a daughter, and a life-changing adventure around the world . . .Their bestselling memoir, Come Back, moved and inspired readers with the story of Mia Fontaine's harrowing drug addiction and her mother, Claire's, desperate and ultimately successful attempts to save her. Now it's a decade later and Claire and Mia each face a defining moment in her life, and a mother-daughter relationship that has frayed around the edges. At fifty-one, Claire's shed her identity as Mia's savior but realizes that, oops, she forgot to plan for life after motherhood; Mia, twenty-five and eager to step outside her role as recovery's poster child, finds adult life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Determined to transform themselves and their relationship once again, the pair sets off on a five-month around-the-world adventure. What awaits them is an extraordinary, often hilarious journey through twenty cities and twelve countries—one that includes mishaps, mayhem, and unexpected joys, from a passport-eating elephant to a calamitous camel ride around the Pyramids—and finally making peace with their tumultuous past in the lavender fields of France, where they live for the last four months of the trip. Seeing how self-possessed and community-minded twentysomethings are in other countries broadens Mia's perspective, helping her grow, and grow up. Claire uses the trip to examine her broken relationship with her own mother, a Holocaust survivor, and to create a vision for her second act. Watching her mom assess half a century of life, Mia comes to know her as Claire has always known Mia—as all mothers know their daughters—better than anyone else, and often better than themselves.Wiser for what they've learned from women in other cultures, and from each other, they return with a deepened sense of who they are and where they want to go—and with each embracing the mature friendship they've discovered and the profound love they share. Alternating between Claire and Mia's compelling and distinct voices, Have Mother, Will Travel is a testament to the power and beauty of the mother-daughter relationship, one that illuminates possibilities for our own lives.

Available since: 07/17/2012.

Print length: 324 pages.

Other books that might interest you

St Ignatius Loyola: The...

St. Ignatius Loyola

This account of the life of St. Ignatius, dictated by himself to Father Gonzalez, is a most valuable record of the great Founder of the Society of Jesus. It, more than any other work, gives an insight into the spiritual life of St. Ignatius. Few works in ascetical literature, except the writings of St. Teresa and St. Augustine, impart such a knowledge of the soul.The saint in his narrative always refers to himself in the third person, and this mode of speech has here been retained. Many persons who have neither the time, nor, perhaps, the inclination, to read larger works, will read, we trust, with pleasure and profit this autobiography. Ignatius, as he lay wounded in his brother's house, read the lives of the saints to while away the time. Touched by grace, he cried, "What St. Francis and St. Dominic have done, that, by God's grace, I will do." May this little book, in like manner, inspire its readers with the desire of imitating St. Ignatius. This autobiography is a valuable key for the understanding of his Spiritual Exercises. It was kept in the archives for about 150 years

Show book

Short Story Collection Vol 053

Various Various

A collection of 20 short works of fiction in the public domain read by a group of LibriVox members, including short stories by Melville, Blackwood, Hawthorne, Dostoyevsky, Wilde and Thomas Hood.

Show book

Don Felder

Steve Black

Steve Black spoke with Don Felder, former lead guitarist for The Eagles, in the summer of 2017.

Show book

Amazing Leaders: A2 (Collins...

Silvia Tiberio, Fiona MacKenzie

The inspiring stories of 6 people who changed history.
Contents:
William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England
Saladin, historic Muslim leader
Genghis Khan, famous leader of the Mongol empire
Catherine the Great, the woman who turned Russia into an empire
Abraham Lincoln who stopped slavery in the USA
Queen Victoria, the famous British Queen
BRITISH ENGLISH
Word count: 6,360
Headword count: 628
PLUS: visit www.collinselt.com/readers for videos, teacher resources and self-study materials.
This book is Level 1 in the Collins ELT Readers series.
Level 1 is equivalent to CEF level A2.
About the Amazing People series:
A unique opportunity for learners of English to read about the exceptional lives and incredible abilities of some of the most insightful people the world has seen.
Each book contains six short stories, told by the characters themselves, as if in their own words. The stories explain the most significant parts of each character’s life, giving an insight into how they came to be such an important historic figure.
After each story, a timeline presents the most major events in their life in a clear and succinct fashion. The timeline is ideal for checking comprehension or as a basis for project work or further research.
Created in association with The Amazing People Club.
About Collins ELT Readers:
Collins ELT Readers are divided into four levels:
Level 1 – elementary (A2)
Level 2 – pre-intermediate (A2–B1)
Level 3 – intermediate (B1)
Level 4 – upper intermediate (B2)
Each level is carefully graded to ensure that the learner both enjoys and benefits from their reading experience.

Show book

Winning in Reverse - Defying the...

Bill Lester, Jonathan Ingram

NASCAR has traditionally been a southern white man’s sport, but it was knocked off its axis when Bill Lester entered the playing field. He had not grown up in the sport as so many other drivers had. Instead, he enjoyed racing as a side hobby while he worked as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Then, at age forty, while standing on the brink of peril or promise, he quit his job to pursue racing full time. Blessed with natural talent, Bill still had a trifecta of odds against him: he was black, he was middle aged, and he wasn’t a southerner. In other words, he was not the quintessential “good old boy” that NASCAR was used to seeing, and many fans did not hide their contempt for him. But Bill rose above it all, as did his rankings, and he made history time and time again, becoming the first African American to race in NASCAR’s Busch Series, the first to participate in the Nextel Cup, and the first to win a Pole Position start in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. In Winning in Reverse, Bill reveals how he came to love working on muscle cars as a child, pursued amateur racing, and then finally transitioned to the pros. Listeners will be inspired by his inspirational and encouraging voice and the conviction that fills each page. Whether you’re contemplating a career or lifestyle change, challenging social norms, or struggling against prejudice or bigotry, Winning in Reverse is a story for everyone who roots for perseverance in the face of adversity.

Show book

Ten Days that Shook the World

John Reed

Ten Days that Shook the World (1919) is a book by American journalist and socialist John Reed about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 which Reed experienced firsthand. Reed followed many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, especially Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek, closely during his time in Russia.

John Reed died in 1920, shortly after the book was finished, and he is one of the few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow, a site normally reserved only for the most prominent Soviet leaders.

Max Eastman recalls a meeting with John Reed in the middle of Sheridan Square during the period of time when Reed isolated himself writing the book:
"...he wrote Ten Days that Shook the World - wrote it in another ten days and ten nights or little more. He was gaunt, unshaven, greasy-skinned, a stark sleepless half-crazy look on his slightly potato-like face - had come down after a night's work for a cup of coffee.
'Max, don't tell anybody where I am. I'm writing the Russian revolution in a book. I've got all the placards and papers up there in a little room and a Russian dictionary, and I'm working all day and all night. I haven't shut my eyes for thirty-six hours. I'll finish the whole thing in two weeks. And I've got a name for it too - Ten Days that Shook the World. Good-by, I've got to go get some coffee. Don't for God's sake tell anybody where I am!'
Do you wonder I emphasize his brains? Not so many feats can be found in American literature to surpass what he did there in those two or three weeks in that little room with those piled-up papers in a half-known tongue, piled clear up to the ceiling, and a small dog-eared dictionary, and a memory, and a determination to get it right, and a gorgeous imagination to paint it when he go it. But I wanted to comment on now was the unqualified, concentrated joy in his mad eyes that morning. He was doing what he was made to do, writing a great book. And he had a name for it too - Ten Days that Shook the World!" (From Wikipedia)

Show book