Voyager : travel writings / Russell Banks

Part 1. Voyager -- Part 2. Pilgrim's regress -- Primal dreams -- House of slaves -- The last birds of paradise -- Innocents abroad -- Last days feeding frenzy -- The wrong stuff -- Fox and whale, priest and angel -- Old goat.

Now in his mid-seventies, Russell Banks has indulged his wanderlust for more than half a century. In this anthology, he writes that since childhood he has "longed for escape, for rejuvenation, for wealth untold, for erotic and narcotic and sybaritic fresh starts, for high romance, mystery and intrigue." The longing for escape has taken him from the "bright green islands and turquoise seas" of the Caribbean to peaks in the Himalayas, the Andes, and beyond. Banks shares highlights from his travels: interviewing Fidel Castro in Cuba; motoring to a hippie reunion with college friends in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; eloping to Edinburgh to marry his fourth wife, Chase; driving a sunset-orange metallic Hummer down Alaska's Seward Highway. In each of these remarkable essays, Banks considers his life and the world.