A Description of My New Book from the Publisher...

Whether you’re venturing to a foreign country thousands of miles from home or are simply crossing the closest state line, when you embark on a journey to an unfamiliar land, you carry with you an amalgamation of the events, experiences, people, and places you have encountered throughout your life. In her compilation of travel essays entitled We Never Travel Alone: A Collection of Essays on Journeys Near and Far, R. A. Voss presents readers with thirteen stories that recount her childhood excursions throughout her home state of Iowa as well as her travels to countries situated on the opposite side of the globe. Using her past encounters with various people and places as a guide, Voss touches on topics that range from history and family ancestry to equal rights and environmental sustainability. Poignant and insightful, her essays highlight the way such experiences have shaped her perceptions of new places she has visited and new people she has met throughout her life so far.

The collection unfolds with an introduction to the adult version of Voss and the life she lives in the present day. As each subsequent story is told, readers receive insight into her past through stories that delve into her family’s roots in Scott County, Iowa, and the impact her childhood explorations of her home state have had on the person she is today. Although the geographical locations Voss visits in her travels are vastly different from one another, each story revolves around the over-arching theme that no matter where one travels, the destination provides an opportunity for visitors to better understand a variety of other cultures and to identify the common problems and issues faced by individuals around the world on a daily basis.

From Buttermilk Road—an essay that details the daytrip Voss’s family took to a local waterway in rural Iowa and sheds lights on the environmental dangers posed by DDT in the 1960s—to Violence Exposed at a Buddhist Monastery—an essay that describes the day Voss and her husband witnessed a surprising event in Japan—the stories told in We Never Travel Alone crisscross the genres of travel, memoir, and nature writing, and run the gamut from lighthearted and comical to somber and self-reflective. Due to the descriptive nature of the essays, lovers of travel writing will feel as though they are embarking on a journey of their very own as they follow in Voss’s footsteps and rediscover her past experiences alongside her.

As she recounts her experiences with vastly different people and cultures in Canada, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Voss showcases for readers the way her upbringing in eastern Iowa has impacted her current attitudes, interests, and motivations when traveling somewhere far from home. Her thought-provoking compilation encourages readers to ponder a series of questions that have a tendency to present themselves whenever a person takes a step into an unknown territory: Why does this particular person or place resonate with my soul? How does my upbringing in one tiny dot on the map influence the way I perceive the people who call this unfamiliar place their home? Through her own interaction with such questions, Voss has discovered that because the people and places of our past are so deeply ingrained into our current consciousness—and play such a pivotal role in the way we view the world around us—no matter where our journeys ultimately take us, we can rest assured we will never travel there alone.

You can buy this book at River Lights Bookstore:

http://www.riverlights.com/catalog/we-never-travel-alone-collection-essays-journeys-near-and-far

You can buy this book online at:

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781482610895

http://www.amazon.com/We-Never-Travel-Alone-Collection/dp/1482610892/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375912578&sr=8-1&keywords=we+never+travel+alone.