Travel

When author Stephanie Lacava was 12, her family moved to the Parisian suburb of Le Vésinet. She already felt like an outsider and this move simply confirmed it, guaranteeing that she would never again be simply “American” or “French” or any other single nationality, emotionally if not legally. On top of that, the move coincides with a descent into mental illness, a bone-deep depression that will haunt Lacava for the rest of her life.

Lacava was the sort of child who places great importance on objects, even before the move–tangible things she could hold in her hands and arrange on a shelf, and the intangible but nonetheless solidity of stories, mythologies that explained the world to her.

Author Ken Budd was dissatisfied with his life. The sudden, unexpected death of his father  left him adrift, comparing his own life to his father’s and coming up short. He really wants kids but his wife Julie, a woman he loves and is absolutely committed to, is adamant that she does not. He looks at his dad’s philosophy of life, that of giving back to the community, a man who encouraged others to be better than they were and who invested in other people. Budd says, “It’s not…dying that bothers me. It’s dying without making a difference in the world.” (15) It’s while he wrestling with this that an email lands in his inbox, inviting volunteers to spend a week helping rebuild and clean-up New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.