The Glimpse Traveler [Paperback]

When she joins a pair of hitchhikers on a trip to California, a young Midwestern woman embarks on a journey about memory and knowledge, beauty and realization. This true story, set in 1971, recounts a fateful, nine-day trip into the American counterculture that begins on a whim and quickly becomes a mission to unravel a tragic mystery. The narrators path leads her to Berkeley, San Francisco, Mill Valley, Big Sur, and finally to an abandoned resort motel, now become a down-on-its-luck commune in the desert of southern Colorado. Neither a memoir about private misery, nor a shocking expos? of life in a turbulent era, The Glimpse Traveler describes with wry humor and deep feeling what it was like to witness a peculiar and impossibly rich time.

The Glimpse Traveler is more than a book written about a generation; this is a book about memory and how we recall the intense moments of our lives. Most writers would reveal the story in long chapters, steeped with descriptions and dialogue, but Boruch offers us something different: the way memories are really revealed. 9/30/2011The Glimpse Traveler is a wild romp into the wild romp of the 1971, trippy, establishment-hating past, with all the accoutrements: hitchhiking, hippie vans, communes, Esalen, nude sun-bathing, hot-tubbing, bong-hittingyou name it, Marianne Boruch has got it covered. Hilarious satire, tender coming-of-age-making-of-a-poet memoir, bursting with dazzling language and marvelous characters. A stunning book!With a frank poignancy which paints the experience as neither good or bad but merely a truly unique experience like none other, The Glimpse Traveler is a thoughtful and much recommended pick.This slender volume by poet and essayist Boruch . . . will transport readers to a time when a nation's youth searched for meaning against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Marianne Boruch, a poet, is Professor of English at Purdue University. She has published several poetry collections and two books of essays, l#6