We rode trains for ten months with no tickets. 

Off the Tracks: A Beatnik Family Journey is based on my 1961 diary.  It was a year of discovery, and I hated it.  Culture shock and going to school in a second language were difficult for an 11 year old who wanted to be one of the girls.  My clothes were funny. Mother dyed everything navy blue so that the coal dust filth of the trains would not show.  I was used to being a stellar students and suddenly I couldn’t read and write in German.  The adults around me were oblivious to rules, laws and even respectable manners.

Something happened.  As an adult, I ventured a second long trip, and this time my fluency in German was an asset.  Our family continued its tradition of hosting exchange students, a tradition that is now in its third generation.  “Uncles”  and “aunts” sprang up everywhere. Over the years we shared joys, successes and losses with the extended European family.   I ventured into the travel industry – for fifteen years.

Eventually I married a road warrior, and our travels have led us to deeper understandings and into more stories.  Islands of Deception: Lying with the Enemy borrows on many of those experiences, long evenings of dinner and wine with key characters, the questions we never would have asked and embraces that promise friendship far into the future.

Please, do come with us.