Braver Than You Think, Maggie Downs
Braver Than You Think, Maggie Downs
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Braver Than You Think
Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime

Author: Maggie Downs

Narrator: Rachel Fulginiti

Unabridged: 10 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/12/2020

Synopsis

At age 34, newly married and established in her career as an award-winning newspaper journalist, Maggie Downs quits her job, sells her belongings, and embarks on the solo trip of a lifetime: Her mother’s.As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. “You are braver than you think,” her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries―visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, could not visit herself―encountering some of the world’s most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother. Interweaving travelogue with family memories, Braver Than You Think takes the reader hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, white-water rafting on the Nile, volunteering at a monkey sanctuary in Bolivia, praying at an ashram in India, and fleeing the Arab Spring in Egypt.By embarking on an international journey, Downs learned to make every moment count―traveling around the globe and home again, losing a parent while discovering the world.

About Maggie Downs

MAGGIE DOWNS is an award-winning writer based in Palm Springs, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Palm Springs Life, and McSweeney’s and has been anthologized in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World’s Best Writers and Best Women’s Travel Writing. Braver Than You Think is her first book. Find out more at maggiedowns.com.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jena on February 22, 2020

I looked forward to reading this book. This is the author’s memoir of the trips she took, trips that she and her mother had dreamed of experiencing. Before I started the book I imagined, “Oh how splendid. I will get to be an arm-chair traveler. I hope we go to Paris, Florence, Sydney, maybe even Mos......more

Goodreads review by Fiction Addition Angela on April 04, 2020

Big five stars for this one. I loved it and wanted to slow down the pages turning but that was nearly impossible because from the moment I started it I was hooked. Maggie Downs is 34 and very newly married - she is a newspaper journalist and begins her "braver than you think" journey by quitting her......more

Goodreads review by Maggie on May 13, 2020

A tour de force!......more

Goodreads review by Carol on February 26, 2021

I gave up in South Africa. Let’s see. Mommy is dying, unpleasantly of the final stages of dementia. Dad is taking care of her. Our author finds this all so painful she leaves. Leaves sick mom, caregiver dad and new husband. Not so very Impressive an action but if she writes a book about those travel......more

Goodreads review by Robert on May 02, 2020

I won’t be the first or last to point it out but see no way around saying it precisely: Braver Than You Think by Maggie Downs is precisely the book for right now. I have no doubt that Downs would be aggrieved when asked about having to cancel a publicity tour, to not have the opportunity to speak to......more

Quotes

"Downs has a fluid, conversational writing style, zooming in to particular anecdotes that illuminate her experience rather than trying to cover the entire year . . . The travel sections are compelling and lively. A poignant tale of connection and disconnection through travel." —Kirkus Reviews“In prose so vivid that I felt the coral cutting her feet in the Red Sea, the sharp fangs of a monkey as his teeth hit her flesh, and the devastation of losing her mother, Maggie Downs proves she’s a great stylist and a great storyteller. If you want an adventure story, a love story, a story about losing a parent or about becoming one—or if you’re simply looking for a great read—Braver Than You Think is your book.” —Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl“Maggie Downs is Braver Than You Think—and braver than she thinks, before she sets off on the globe-trotting, culture-hopping, grief-haunted trip of her (and her mother’s) lifetime. This is a book about love and loss, yes, but also about survival, about curiosity and determination, and about how to thrive when the world seems suddenly to hold no certainty. I devoured this book in one sitting and closed its last pages enriched, moved, and inspired. You will be, too.” —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

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