Paradise Road: A Memoir (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781950495115)

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 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