YOU SLEPT WHERE?

This part-memoir, part-travelogue ventures to quirky locations and discussions of serious topics.

Sellers, the president of global manufacturing company Chroma, has a lot to share about her travels over the years—particularly about offbeat places she’s spent the night, including an underwater lodge in Florida and a one-room inn shaped like a beagle in Idaho. These locations were not happenstance, but selected with the careful planning of a dedicated voyager. The author, who often had to travel to faraway places for work, explains that she had an extensive to-do list that encompassed a wide range of potential destinations. Sometimes she visited these places with her husband, Big Ed, and at other times she was alone. Throughout it all, she has, more often than not, taken photographs with a dream of one day having a credit in National Geographic. Readers follow along as the author looks for wigwams on Route 6, indulges in a chocolate bath in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and takes a mule ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Amid the fun, though, she also details the deteriorating health of her parents. She tells of how her father, a lifetime farmer and a practical sort, liked to point out such things as how she need not pay to sleep in a former grain silo in Akron, Ohio, when she could sleep in a silo on his farm for free. Despite her dad’s lifetime of vigor, the pressures of old age eventually took their toll. She also describes how her mother suffered from dementia, which led to difficulties in her later years. As her mother’s memory faded, she says, a great deal was lost, including family recipes that vanished “like writing on a chalkboard that had been erased.”

This mixture of obscure travel locations and harsh truths about aging makes for a distinct and highly personal combination. Readers can never be sure if the next chapter will be about staying in a house where Lizzie Borden once lived or about the author’s father playing down the seriousness of a health issue. Whatever the topic, however, a sense of humor often shines through. When her dad apparently developed a crush on one of his nurses, he decided to bring a picture of his younger self to the hospital—a recollection that readers may find both funny and touching. The laughs in some of the travel pieces sometimes feel forced, however. The author’s account of her attempt to “build a rapport” with a police officer after being pulled over on Route 66 is lengthy and without much payoff; after she recalls singing him a Bruce Springsteen song, she follows up by stating that it “didn’t seem to be helping me bond with the officer.” Overall, though, the book presents well-developed accounts of people and places—including some locales that the average person may never have visited. By the end, readers will not only have new ideas for travel destinations, but also more empathy for aging loved ones.

An offbeat but affecting set of remembrances.