The Same River Twice: A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel

by Pam Mandel

Overview

Acclaimed travel writer Pam Mandel's thrilling account of a life-defining journey from the California suburbs to Israel to the Himalayan peaks and back.

Given the choice, Pam Mandel would say no and stay home. It was getting her nowhere, so she decided to say yes. Yes to hard work and hitch-hiking, to mean boyfriends and dirty travel, to unfolding the map and walking to its edges. Yes to unknown countries, night shifts, language lessons, bad decisions, to anything to make her feel real, visible, alive.

A product of beige California suburbs, Mandel was overlooked and unexceptional. When her father ships her off on a youth group tour of Israel, he inadvertently catapults his seventeen-year-old daughter into a world of angry European backpackers, seize-the-day Israelis, and the fall out of cold war-era politics. Border violence hadn't been on the birthright tour agenda. But then neither had domestic violence, going broke, getting wasted, getting sick, or getting lost.

With no guidance and no particular plan, utterly unprepared for what lies ahead, Mandel says yes to everything and everyone, embarking on an adventure across three continents and thousands of miles, from a cold water London flat to rural Pakistan, from the Nile River Delta to the snowy peaks of Ladakh and finally, back home to California, determined to shape a life that is truly hers.
An extraordinary memoir of going away and growing up, The Same River Twice follows Mandel's tangled journey and shows how travel teaches and changes us, even while it helps us become exactly who we have been all along. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510761001
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Pam Mandel launched her career as a travel writer with a blog; Nerd's Eye View. She's since had her stories published by AFAR, Lonely Planet, AAA, Seattle Met, Sunset, and across the web. She's been to all seven continents and is as surprised by that as anyone. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with a rescue dog named Harley and too many ukuleles. 
 

Read an Excerpt

 

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Welcome to Israel 1

Chapter 2 Anywhere But Here 5

Chapter 3 Graduation Present 17

Chapter 4 Israeli Exit Strategy 25

Chapter 5 American Girls, Israeli Boys 37

Chapter 6 Language Lessons 49

Chapter 7 No More Baklava 59

Chapter 8 Mail Call 71

Chapter 9 Lost Boys and Lost Girls 79

Chapter 10 You Can't Go Home Again 89

Chapter 11 Electric Avenue 97

Chapter 12 Let's Go 105

Chapter 13 Washed Up 117

Chapter 14 Back to the Land 123

Chapter 15 A Second Passport 137

Chapter 16 Off the Map 147

Chapter 17 The Hill Towns 161

Chapter 18 To Touch the Sky 177

Chapter 19 Back to the Gray 193

Chapter 20 Not Quite Home 201

Chapter 21 Back Where I Started 213

Chapter 22 The Same River Twice 219

Apologies and Acknowledgements 225

Editorial Reviews

09/14/2020

Mandel, a travel writer and Nerd’s Eye View blogger, recalls her tumultuous youth abroad in this edgy, unfiltered travel narrative. In high school, unmoored by her parents’ divorce, Mandel shuffled between living with friends and family, failed classes, and snorted cocaine. Upon graduation, her “future a foggy wasteland,” her parents sent her to a kibbutz in Israel. There, she found a sense of place and friendship among the travelers and locals, and fell in love with a young Israeli soldier. When they broke up, Mandel “felt displaced” again, and began a relationship with Alastair, an unemployed Brit in his 20s who was kicking around Israel. Alastair became abusive, and they traveled across Europe, then back to Israel, where Mandel had a miscarriage. She continued to travel with Alastair, including to Egypt and India, and on brief solo side-trips she felt “lighter” and “fearless,” and finally determined to leave him and return to California and college. Mandel’s introspective approach (“I was afraid... that I deserved everything I received”) is leavened with wit about the role of “lost girls and boys.” (“Wendy ends up getting the shitty end of things... sewing Peter Pan’s shadow.”) Rather than a pat conclusion, Mandel comes away with a mix of regret and “sheer wonder” about the memories and life experience her travels gave her. Messy but provocative, Mandel’s chaotic coming-of-age story is emotionally hard to read, but also hard to put down. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Messy but provocative, Mandel’s chaotic coming-of-age story is emotionally hard to read, but also hard to put down."—Publisher's Weekly

"Mandel is adept at describing her surroundings, really putting readers right there with her. She also excels at capturing teenage turmoil and the feeling of being a secondary character in your own story. Memoir and travelogue readers will devour this."—Booklist

"This is not your usual travel memoir, but a narrative of a teen on a lonely and sometimes brutal journey to discover herself. . . . Her voice is compelling, authentic, and heartbreaking at times. . . . Young adults and college students who are considering a gap year will be interested in this cautionary coming-of-age story."—Library Journal

"The Same River Twice may be set in a time before Google Maps, but the experiences Pam Mandel generously shares are timeless. By turns wondrous and harrowing, her story of travel without a safety net perfectly captures the experience of finding your way into adulthood, halfway around the globe. Mandel has managed to remind me of both the poignant uncertainty of my not-quite-adult years and the great thrill of discovering that the world is a beautiful, welcoming place. The Same River Twice is a generous lesson for any traveler."—Zora O’Neill, author of All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World

"Pam Mandel’s remarkable memoir is a love letter to travel, to youth, and to a certain kind of beautiful aimlessness. It’s about getting lost and finding your way. Most of all, it reminds us of how thrilling, perilous, and important it is to be a traveler, to go off on that journey and discover our place in the world. The Same River Twice is an extraordinary and poignant work of travel writing.”—Jason Wilson, series editor The Best American Travel Writing, author of Godforsaken Grapes

"A vivid, raw, and lyrical book that cuts deep from the very start, and reminds you that there are no shortcuts to healing. If you were skeptical of fairy tales as a kid, the moral of this gritty story will resonate: that sometimes, the only person coming to save you is yourself."—Geraldine DeRuiter, author of All Over the Place

"In The Same River Twice, Mandel beautifully conveys how we can be both free and trapped, liberated and lost. This book snuck up on me. Yes, it's a travel memoir, full of vivid details of faraway lands. But at some point I realized Mandel was also writing her way through one of adulthood’s key lessons—forgiving ourselves for missteps and mistakes. She writes with empathy and resilience about the path to adulthood, which is often meandering and messy, but always full of adventure."—Rachel Friedman, author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost
 

From the Publisher

10/01/2020

As a 17-year-old high school graduate, Mandel (blogger, Nerd's Eye View) faced an uncertain future. Neither of her divorced parents offered her a home, so she was sent off to Israel to spend a year as an agricultural worker. This is not your usual travel memoir, but a narrative of a teen on a lonely and sometimes brutal journey to discover herself. It's 1980, and she fears for her physical safety and mental health, and that she has nowhere to return to once her year is up. She meets others in her travels, young adults who are unable to find work in their home counties. Good at languages and interested in art, she finds that lack of funds limits any enjoyment of the places she visits. She travels through Europe, Egypt, and India with an abusive boyfriend, staying with him because she has no other options. Her voice is compelling, authentic, and heartbreaking at times. Angry and depressed, she eventually returns to California, where her mother has remarried and her father is going to prison. VERDICT Young adults and college students who are considering a gap year will be interested in this cautionary coming-of-age story.—Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI

Library Journal