Far from Home: Father-Daughter Travel Adventures

by Wendy Knight (Editor)

Fathers have a profound impact on their daughters, shaping their abilities to love and ultimately to venture forth, physically and emotionally. At the same time, daughters both inadvertently and purposefully break down the artificial walls of masculinity that men sometimes build with a purity and power that mothers, wives, and girlfriends cannot. Weaving together the thrill of adventure with the unique issues surrounding that connection, Far from Home examines what happens when father and daughter embark side by side on the adventure of their choosing. Veteran outdoor travel writer Mark Jenkins exposes his daughter to the mountains at an early age, but discovers that the lure of pop culture can eclipse his best efforts to teach her about the outdoors. Anna Todd travels to Lebanon nearly twenty years after her father, a Canadian journalist, was killed while covering the war there. Amy Engeler climbs Maine’s highest peak with her father-in-law and two children. Dan Glick learns how to be both father and mother to his adolescent daughter on a round-the-world trip. These remarkable essays and the many others in this insightful, exciting collection are sure to entice and inspire adventurous fathers, daughters, and armchair travelers alike.

Genres: Travel, Memoir

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 2004

About the author

There is more than one author on Goodreads with the name Wendy Knight.

This is a listing for an author of travel and/or managed care non-fiction books.

For works by the Fantasy author, visit her profile here.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of recollections of father-daughter travels but really, more of father-daughter relationships. As each chapter was written by a different author, the way each author resonated with me varied wildly. It appears that many of the fathers had abusive or difficult relationships with their children. There were many broken homes and a lot of miscommunication. The majority of the entries were written by daughters with a few fathers and a few individuals outside that relationship chiming in. For the most part, I wasn't engaged with the majority of this collection. While I'm sure many fill find it touching how one daughter traveled to find where her father was buried by a climbing partner and eventually found his grave torn apart by animals and his body exposed to the elements, I felt it was her story to tell and not the climbing partner's. My favorite chapter was the very first where a daughter told about her relationship with her father through an Indian Princess club at her local YMCA and how they were caught in the aftermath of the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption. Overall, this was a quick read and I would have given it 2.5 stars had it been an available rating.