Go for the JUICE, BABY.
My best adventures in life and journalism

I reported thousands of stories in my 37 years at the Detroit Free Press. I wrote for every department, including the City Room, the National/International Desk, and the Business, Sports, Travel, and Food Sections, and was also a member of the Investigative Team. I loved all of it, but my favorite and last stint was as a co-creator and lead writer for Yak’s Corner, the paper’s prize-winning national news magazine for young readers. It was a dream job. I traveled overseas more than anyone except the Travel Writer.

The Yak was fun, brainy, playful, and inventive, and as strange as it may sound, I found my true voice writing in first person as the Yak mascot. So you will have to forgive me if this book seems only slightly more sophisticated than what you may recall from Yak’s Corner. Think of me as a 10-year-old with advanced writing skills, sharing her very best adventures, including touring the former Soviet Union as a member of a Russian folk dance troupe to perform and train in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus; camping on the Great Wall of China under a full Harvest Moon; marrying a Dane in Denmark; and sneaking up the gangplank of a Russian Tall Ship to crash a party. I was born with a lust for travel, always seeking out what most amazed me wherever I found it — or where it found me.