NOWHERE FOR VERY LONG

An emotionally wounded woman chooses a wild life.

In September 2016, Madia and her boyfriend—and soon, husband—decided to give up their Salt Lake City apartment and live in an old, rusted van, unheated, uninsulated, freezing in winter and suffocatingly hot in summer, which they affectionately named Bertha. They eventually added “a homemade shower, a roof box, bike rack, and solar panels,” making it look “like something out of a Mad Max movie.” Along with two energetic dogs, they roamed the west in a vehicle that repeatedly, and frustratingly, broke down in the middle of nowhere. In her candid debut memoir, Madia reveals her “curiously deep-seated need to be against,” which led her to embrace a decidedly unconventional life. Born and raised in a middle-class neighborhood situated between a wealthy Connecticut suburb and blighted Bridgeport, she grew up “at the center of shame and guilt and money and status.” She was rebelling, though, against more than consumerism and conformity. By the time she was in high school, her father had gone to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. After he cheated on her mother, her parents divorced, and she didn’t hear from him for years. In college, she became so depressed she was suicidal. “Perhaps it was the loss of so much that made me want so little,” she reflects. “The less I had, the less I’d have to inevitably part with.” Settling into a house, having a family, even holding a stable job felt constricting: “Fear and curiosity. Those, to me, became the essentials of being alive.” Madia describes in visceral detail the near disasters that she experienced, the horrific accident that nearly killed one of the dogs, and her evolution into an Instagram personality that gave her an audience eager for stories of her adventures. In social media, she finally found the validation and appreciation she longed for: “I loved being someone other women looked up to.”

An inspiring chronicle of a search for healing.