About the Book
"Buoyant humor...richly complex friendships and romantic relationships...moments that stir real emotion." (Booklife)
Setting off on a 3-year journey across America and Europe, free-spirited "good girl," Fay Faron, shakes off her conservative upbringing as she navigates her way through the changing world of the 1970s, as she faces assault, poverty, punishing jobs, betrayal, loss, and romance.
Powering through a series of revenge plagues rained down from The Almighty-hey, she is breaking all the rules, after all-Fay must learn to recalibrate her conservative group-think or abandon her road-trip-as-a-lifestyle existence and retreat to the soul-crushing community from which she escaped.
Part historical snapshot, part travelogue and part confessional, this laugh-out-loud memoir is the story of every woman who has pondered the road not taken or grappled with the guilt of not being able to live up to rules she didn't make.
About the Author :
Fay Faron lived 25 years in San Francisco. The sinking of her Sausalito houseboat in 1982 birthed a new business, The Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency, when she tasked herself with finding the Breatharian renter who lived in her boat for the two years prior. Faron's advice column, Ask Rat Dog was syndicated by King Features in 1992, appearing in over 60 newspapers including The Chicago Sun Time, The Dallas Morning News and The San Jose Mercury News. She has appeared on Oprah Winfrey, Larry King Live, and 20/20, and her cases have been profiled in People magazine, Vanity Fair, U.S.A. Today and in Edgar award-winning Jack Olsen's true crime, Hastened to the Grave. In 2001, Fay moved to New Orleans, settling in historic Algiers Point, directly across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter. In 2012, the City Council named her, Ferrygodmother of New Orleans, for saving the Canal Street ferry, and in 2019, she was awarded a Marquis Who's Who's Lifetime Achievement Award for her investigative career. Today, Fay spends her time writing, traveling, and tooling around on Hog, her Honda Passport 50cc scooter. Her family consists of her long-time California friends who visit on a regular basis, along with the New Orleans ones who feel free to enter her home at will. Her roommates are a border collie mix, Beauregard Napoleon, and a noisy black cat, Mary Puddin' Bells.
Review :
Booklife Review
With wit and an eye for the unexpected, writer and private eye Faron shares her coming-of-age quest to shake off a fundamentalist upbringing in the early 1970s, vividly capturing the challenge of self-discovery in a dangerous world. She lit out from Arizona in '72 to fulfill her "destiny as a Creative Writer"-she notes "nobody was creative enough to find anything to write about in Phoenix"-and embarked on a three year odyssey of travel in the U.S and Europe. She admits she was unprepared for the journey, though she found her expeditions exciting, albeit at times quite terrifying. Traveling mostly alone, she faced assault, poverty, language barriers, and punishing jobs (selling sewing machines; working at what turned out to be a puppy mill) to make ends meet.
Faron writes with buoyant humor, setting the stage for her travels and the era with cultural references ("*On the Radio: Mac Davis' 'Baby, Don't Get Hooked On Me'") and acknowledging that maybe rather than a writer she aspired to being "a Creative Live-er." Her targeted audience is adults, and women especially will enjoy the story, as much of Faron's writing centers on the challenges she faced as a soul-searching woman during an era of change. She's frank about having held attitudes that today seem retrograde-"nobody liked lesbians, not even the Woman's Movement"-though the occasional dated expression supports the theme of Faron breaking free from her conservative upbringing.
"This book is hard to put down. It is fun with some serious themes mixed in. The author's playful use of words kept a smile on my face throughout."
"Fay's adventures are amazing. She takes us with her around the world."
"This could have been my story - young, idealistic, naive, exploring the world on a shoestring budget."
"Great romp through memory lane on the way-back machine."
"Fun, breezy, optimistic. Perfectly captures the time."
"A lovely, engaging, thoroughly enjoyable read from a clearly joyful spirit!"
"Do you even remember when you were a teetotaling virgin? Don't answer that question (you know you'll lie) or begin to blush and stutter. Because just in time comes Fay Faron's Journey of a Teetotaling Virgin. She actually was one and has a good memory. You can both blush and stutter but you'll be laughing all the way. Then you can look back on your own journey with a little more perspective." - Chris Wiltz, The Last Madam
