27/08/2026
Found this one over on Indie Reading Community and thought it might interest authors and readers here who enjoy memoirs that wander well beyond the usual travel story.
Travels with Vamper: A Graybeard’s Journey by George Critchlow begins with a newly retired law professor, a 1999 camper van, and a drive through America in 2016. What starts as a road trip gradually becomes a much wider reflection on people, history, culture, politics, community, aging, and the experiences that shape the way we see the world.
One of the things that caught my attention is how the journey moves between personal memories and the places he encounters. A passage set in New Orleans, for example, captures the music, crowds, cultures, contradictions, and sheer mixture of people that give the city its character before the road carries him north again.
It sounds like the kind of book where the landscape is only part of the journey. The other journey is through memory, identity, American history, and the questions we tend to ask when we finally have enough distance to look back at where we have been.
Worth a look if you enjoy travel memoirs with something deeper running underneath them.
In the summer of 2016, a newly retired law school professor bought a 1999 Ford Coachman camper van and drove into America's heartland. His intention was to inve...
