PARADISE ROAD BY MARILYN KRIETE
A restless child of the 1960s, Marilyn yearns for love, hippiedom, and escape from her mother’s control. At 14, she runs nearly a thousand miles away to Vancouver, British Columbia, eventually landing herself in a Catholic home for troubled girls. At 16, she’s emancipated, navigating adulthood without a high school diploma, and craving a soulmate. When she falls in love with Jack, the grad student living next door, life finally seems perfect. The two embark on a cross-continental bicycle trip, headed for South America, but before they reach Mexico, Jack dies. Utterly shattered, Marilyn does the hardest thing she can imagine: a solo bicycle trip, part tribute, part life test. She conquers her fears but goes wildly off course, chasing her heart as she falls into a series of tragicomic rebounds. Two itinerant years later, a chain of events in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains leads to a peace she never expected to find.
Reminiscent of Wild and Travelling with Ghosts, Marilyn’s journey portrays a life unmoored by grief, brought to shore again.
PARADISE ROAD was selected as the International Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club’s International Book of the Month for March 2021.
Paradise Road was selected as the Winner of the Young Adult Non-Fiction Category at the National Indie Excellence Awards!
PARADISE ROAD was also selected as a Finalist out of thousands of entries under both the New Adult Non-Fiction and Book Cover Design: Non-Fiction categories.
“Paradise Road is a fearless account of Marilyn Kriete’s life of adventure. She unspools the tale of plunging into each chapter of her life with great candor and momentum. She has an uncanny knack for putting the reader by her side through each exhilaration, each heartbreak, each danger, each triumph.” – Kimberley Cetron, author of Fractals: The Invisible World of Fractals Made Visible Through Theatre and Dance
“Watching Marilyn Kriete crack wide open and feel utterly wounded, only to watch her attempt to piece herself back together one mile at a time. From her happiness feeling truly ebullient to her crestfallen soul, we meet a woman furiously bicycling towards her future. Paradise Road is such a beautifully painted story, I felt as if I was with her and cheering her on the entire time.”—Annie McDonnell of The Write Review
“Like Milton’s Paradise Lost and Kerouac’s On the Road, Marilyn Kriete’s Paradise Road is an epic poetic trip. I was bewitched by the language from start to finish and hoping for more.” —Judy Kirkwood, award-winning writer and author of Prelude to a Divorce
“Every once in a while, a memoir comes along that is so inspiring you want to share it with the world. Paradise Road is the very brave story of a woman, who had the tenacity and spirit to rise above all of life’s sorrows and challenges. Five Diamonds in the Pulpwood Queen Mandatory Tiara of great reads!” —Kathy L. Murphy, CEO and Founder of The International Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club Reading Nation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
A restless child of the 1960s, Marilyn yearns for love, hippiedom, and escape from her mother’s control. At 14, she runs nearly a thousand miles away to Vancouver, British Columbia, eventually landing herself in a Catholic home for troubled girls. At 16, she’s emancipated, navigating adulthood without a high school diploma, and craving a soulmate. When she falls in love with Jack, the grad student living next door, life finally seems perfect. The two embark on a cross-continental bicycle trip, headed for South America, but before they reach Mexico, Jack dies. Utterly shattered, Marilyn does the hardest thing she can imagine: a solo bicycle trip, part tribute, part life test. She conquers her fears but goes wildly off course, chasing her heart as she falls into a series of tragicomic rebounds. Two itinerant years later, a chain of events in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains leads to a peace she never expected to find.
After a colorful life spanning four continents and 16 cities, earning her keep as cook, chambermaid, waitress, fisherwoman, missionary, speaker/teacher, tutor, and academic writing editor, MARILYN KRIETE now lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, with her charitable husband Henry and three demanding cats. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Lyric, Storyteller, The Eastern Iowa Review, The English Bay Review, and Brevity Blog. PARADISE ROAD is her debut memoir.
