Helpful Score: 3
Wow- I just finished reading this fascinating double memoir, of a 1956 cross-USA bike trek by a woman, then a 1996 cross-USA bike trek by her daughter, retracing the route. The discoveries of places and towns which stay the same or are forever changed made for an interesting read. What courage these woman had! If you like adventure, even armchair adventure, this book is superb.
Helpful Score: 1
I appreciated Peggy and Brian's switching off to give details of their shared experience, interspersed (what a word!) with her mom June's recollections of her own cross-country cycling adventure 40 years earlier. As an interesting gender reversal, Brian seemed to talk the most about how he felt, with Peggy's reports being more factual (although she does make it clear she's far from blind to her mother's ... ummm ... controlling nature); June was single - though travelled with an acquaintance - and rather a party animal, giving her accounts quite a different perspective.
The Adventure of Two Lifetimes fuses the story of Peggy and Brian Goetz with the tale of Peggy's mother, June. This is not so much a travelogue as it is a memoir of time, of places, of a mother and a daughter. It's a book about how one woman's courage and quest for a place in the world forever changed her life, and how her daughter emerged from the shadow of that feat to find her own place in the world, together with her husband. And finally, it's a book about America and Americans, in two very different generations.
