Between Worlds: An Expat’s Quest for Belonging

by Inga Aksamit

What happens when a child grows up between worlds, never fully belonging anywhere? In this compelling memoir, Inga Aksamit takes readers on a journey across four continents as she navigates life as the daughter of an international engineer during the turbulent 1960s and '70s.

From age four, when she nearly loses her mother on a Tokyo train platform, through harrowing military evacuations from Pakistan and Bangladesh, Inga's childhood is marked by constant change and adaptation. She attends nine schools before high school, learning to make friends quickly while knowing each goodbye might be permanent. In Peru, she faces life-threatening illness while her father works in the remote Sechura Desert. Back in California, she struggles to fit into suburban life, carrying the invisible scars of her expatriate youth.

Through it all, she grapples with questions of identity and belonging. Is home the place where her doll Chuz sits on her bed, or is it somewhere deeper within? How does a child process trauma when the adults around her treat upheaval as adventure? And how does that child grow into an adult capable of lasting relationships?

Written with unflinching honesty and vivid detail, Between Worlds captures both the privilege and the pain of a Third Culture Kid's experience. Aksamit's story illuminates the complexity of growing up across cultures while offering hope for finding connection and belonging. This intimate memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever felt caught between identities or searched for a place to call home.

Genres: Memoir

261 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 27, 2025

About the author

Inga Aksamit is an award-winning author, globe-trotting adventurer and veteran oncology nurse who writes about travel and human connection. Her love of exploration has taken her around the world to hike in remote mountain ranges, explore ancient ruins, and immerse herself in different cultures. She started traveling at age four when her family embraced the expat lifestyle and moved from the US to Asia for her father’s work. Her childhood experiences as a third-culture kid (TCK) in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Peru, and Indonesia, combined with her career in oncology nursing, allow her to see the world through a compassionate lens of wonder and discovery. Her memoir, “Between Worlds: An Expat Quest for Belonging,” will be published in 2024. Her hiking memoir, “Highs and Lows on the John Muir Trail,” won The Best Outdoor Book award from the Outdoor Writers Association of California in 2015 and “The Hungry Spork Trail Recipes” won the Best Outdoor Guidebook award in 2020.

Reviews

[Anne Sigmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inga Aksamit’s transportive book Between Worlds is a magic carpet to exotic places and bygone times. It a coming-of-age story played out on the road, in her family’s moves to far flung, often harsh, and sometimes dangerous places. Yet Inga and her parents always find the charm and adventure as they travel around the world following her father’s career as an irrigation engineer. Beginning when she was about four years old, they took up residence in two newly formed (and battling) Pakistans, to interim stateside assignments in Texas and California, and later to the rugged and parched desert of northern Peru.
 
Things do not always go well. Inga and her mother are hustled out of a Pakistan a step ahead of revolution. In other times and other places, they dodge bullets. Young Inga encounters racism, classism, and sometimes loneliness. A childish mistake has an almost fatal consequences when young Inga ignores the prohibition against a popular treat made with tapwater and falls seriously ill with typhoid.
 
Yet the sense of excitement is palpable throughout. Inga and her mother both adored life on the road.

The author’s descriptions whisked me out of my study and into her past: “I liked how the sun glinted off the different colors like a stained-glass mosaic with sharp edges”, she writes. Or “We slipped through glassy blue waters dotted with floating white lotus flowers; the large, round, green leaves beckoning like steppingstones for fairies.”
 
Part memoir, part travelogue, part coming-of-age story, Aksamit brings her child-eye sense of wonder to her life as a young expat who both adores life on the road and at the same time struggles to find her place in the world.

This is a great read for travelers and armchair explorers, book clubs, and YA readers.

[Linda Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating and highly engaging story of expat Inga’s journey through life as a TCK. (“Third Culture Kid” is a person who spends a significant part of their childhood outside of their passport country, being influenced by multiple cultures). It’s Inga’s search for identity, having lived in five countries and not really belonged to any. Inga’s parents were American, so that was her passport country, but for a long time it never felt like home to Inga. When Inga was very young she called West Pakistan home. Inga’s father’s job opened up the world to her, and at a time when few travelled the family lived in some amazing countries. The fact that said countries were going through political issues caused challenges for the family, sometimes with evacuation at short notice, but initially not back to America! Inga must have felt so disorientated.
I thoroughly recommend this interesting and entertaining read.

[Nan Pokerwinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mango slices, tangy curries, open-air markets, calls to prayer—in Between Worlds: An Expat’s Quest for Belonging, Inga Aksamit gives readers a glimpse of the expat life in Pakistan through an American child’s eyes. Moving there with her parents at the age of four, young Inga soon comes to find the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of Lahore more familiar than anything she remembers from her early years in Vacaville, California. Pakistan is home.

I can relate. Though I lived only one pivotal year of my teens as an expat, I grew to love my Pacific island home and its people so dearly I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, much less being abruptly uprooted.

For Inga, uprooting becomes a way of life, each move and new home with its own cultures, friendships, traumas, and challenges. It’s no wonder she found herself unsure of her identity by the time she reached high school. Not only did she have to navigate the usual adolescent adjustments, but she also had to figure out where in the world she belonged.

Aksamit’s riveting memoir drew me into the many worlds she inhabited and had me caring deeply about her, her parents, and the people who became part of their lives.

[Janis Couvreux · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "Between Worlds" author Inga Aksamit introduces us to the term "TCK" or Third Culture Kids. As Inga began to research her past having lived much of her childhood aboard, she came across this term to define those American children who grew up mostly abroad, consequently lacking much of a typical American child's cultural identity with the United States. And voilà (!) Inga found an apt description for her sometimes angst ridden past while simultaneously defining her purpose and theme for her memoir.

Inga's quest to understand her atypical past and how it weaved throughout her adult life is traced through her accounts of daily life as well as harrowing experiences that she lived through from the age of four to early adulthood. From Pakistan, Kashmir, and Peru, where her father was contracted as an engineer for water systems projects, she and her family were not only uprooted several times but also physically threatened when fleeing revolutionary uprisings.

By examining her past, Inga comes to understand that by being the "odd one out" from her American peers, she nevertheless gained invaluable wisdom and hindsight via these life experiences and the extreme luck to have known places and countries that have forever changed since her passage. For readers who have lived in a similar fashion sometime in their lives, they will recognize many of Inga's sentiments as well as some "aha" moments. But if you haven't lived such an expat experience, no worries, this book will open your eyes, tempt your curiosity, and possibly urge you to explore—and learn.

[Susan Alcorn]

A completing story of adventure, travel, family and introspection!

Between Worlds – a fascinating book on many levels!. We are given an in-depth look at Inga Aksamit’s life as she is bounced around the world through her childhood and teen years. She was born in a small city in Northern California. As was typical of the 1960s in the U.S, her mom, Dorothy, stayed home to care for her, their home, and their social life. Her dad, Carroll, was the breadwinner. Life was good, but both parents had a strong case of wanderlust.

Between Worlds opens with Aksamit at age 13 – nervously listening to gunfire outside her family’s temporary home in Pakistan and wondering if she and her parents will have to evacuate and return to the United States once again. Or perhaps it will be only be her mom who travels with her because her dad will have to stay behind—again. She contemplates what she would bring with her. Certainly Chuz, her favorite doll who has been with her since Day 1 and shares her games and her confidences, but what else will fit in her small travel bag? Will she be able to say goodbye to the friends she has made here? Will she ever see them again?

Between Worlds takes us back farther — to Aksamit’s first introduction and stay in another city in Pakistan where her dad had accepted a job as Chief Field Engineer with a private company doing work on water drainage in regions the Pakistani government considered critical. It was a jolt to the four-year-old when the plans were first announced, but she was excited about what this change might bring. Her doubts about flying to a new home in a far-away country were mostly soothed by knowing her caring parents would be with her — as well as Chuz.

Things in the major city of Lahore in West Pakistan were quite different from what Inga was used to back home, but her parents’ inquisitive nature was contagious – so the huge outdoor marketplaces weren’t too alarming – except when people stared at her lighter hair and skin, and her clothing – mostly starched blouses and pleated skirts. “Men were dressed in wool caps and baggy trousers with flowing tunics. Some people were draped in full length, black robes, covered from head to toe.”

One thing she didn’t like was when people tried to touch her. However, she quickly learned to duck away and took that in stride as well as the challenge of traveling through the busy streets where cars, carts, people, and dogs vied for any opening to move forward. Having servants at home was a first for both Aksamit and her mother, but they soon learned that having no supermarkets or modern laundry equipment meant that what we in the U.S. consider simple tasks were harder to perform and took a much longer time….

The rich combination of Aksamit’s sharing much about her chaotic life — the joys and the challenges — combined with her rich descriptions of her surroundings — including the art pieces and souvenirs the family collected, the views out their windows, the sprawling marketplaces, and the troop airplanes that transported them from war-torn countries – enrich our experience.
We also see bigger pictures – the religious and cultural differences (such as the Islamic call to prayer five times a day), and the political – including the riots and wars that affected not only Aksamit and her family but also millions of others.

Read this when you have time to savor Inga Between Worlds An Expat’s Quest for Belonging TWO
Between Worlds – a fascinating book on many levels. We are given an in-depth look at Inga Aksamit’s life as she is bounced around the world through her childhood and teen years. She was born in a small city in Northern California. As was typical of the 1960s, her mom, Dorothy, stayed home to care for her, their home, and their social life. Her dad, Carroll, was the breadwinner. Life was good, but both parents had a strong case of wanderlust.
Between Worlds opens with Aksamit at age 13 — nervously listening to gunfire outside her family’s temporary home in Pakistan and wondering if she and her parents will have to evacuate and return to the United States once again. Or perhaps it will be only be her mom who travels with her because her dad will have to stay behind — again.
She contemplates what she would bring with her. Certainly Chuz, her favorite doll who has been with her since Day 1 and shares her games and her confidences, but what else will fit in her small travel bag? Will she be able to say goodbye to the friends she has made here? Will she ever see them again?

Between Worlds takes us back farther — to Aksamit’s first introduction and stay in another city in Pakistan where her dad had accepted a job as Chief Field Engineer with a private company doing work on water drainage in regions the Pakistani government considered critical. It was a jolt to the four-year-old when the plans were first announced, but she was excited about what this change might bring. Her doubts about flying to a new home in a far-away country were mostly soothed by knowing her caring parents would be with her — as well as Chuz.

Things in the major city of Lahore in West Pakistan were quite different from what Inga was used to back home, but her parents’ inquisitive nature was contagious – so the huge outdoor marketplaces weren’t too alarming – except when people stared at her lighter hair and skin, and her clothing – mostly starched blouses and pleated skirts. “Men were dressed in wool caps and baggy trousers with flowing tunics. Some people were draped in full length, black robes, covered from head to toe.”

One thing she didn’t like was when people tried to touch her. However, she quickly learned to duck away and took that in stride as well as the challenge of traveling through the busy streets where cars, carts, people, and dogs vied for any opening to move forward. Having servants at home was a first for both Aksamit and her mother, but they soon learned that having no supermarkets or modern laundry equipment meant that what we in the U.S. considered simple tasks were harder to perform and took a much longer time….

The rich combination of Aksamit’s sharing much about her chaotic life — the joys and the challenges — combined with her rich descriptions of her surroundings — including the art pieces and souvenirs the family collected, the views out their windows, the sprawling marketplaces, and the troop airplanes that transported them from war-torn countries — enrich our experience.

We also see bigger pictures — the religious and cultural differences (such as the Islamic call to prayer five times a day), and the political — including the riots and wars that affected not only Aksamit and her family but also millions of others.

Read this when you have time to savor it; it's a gem!

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving story of a young girl who traverses the globe with expat parents and the childhood experiences that shape her into an adult.

Ms. Aksamit has written a compelling memoir, sharing her life growing up overseas in a time when international travel was difficult and arduous, and few Americans lived abroad. Her father spent much of his working career on international assignments as an irrigation engineer. While maintaining cultural ties to their home country of the United States, the family also experienced deep cultural impacts from their assigned countries. Children who grew up with this kaleidoscope lifestyle are known today as Third Culture Kids. Inga’s journey through 5 countries, several wars and evacuations, multiple schools including countless separations from family and friends is impossible to put down. Insightful observations of how these events influenced her in adulthood are fascinating and honest. Inga’s story is universally appealing as a child who struggles to find her place in the world while growing up. It will certainly resonate in an important way with those who have experienced multiple cultures as a young person, whether in their home country or abroad.

I loved this beautifully written memoir and gained a new appreciation for the impact on children who find themselves Between Worlds.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What must it be like to grow up as an expat, not just in one country, but moving every few years as your father's work takes you? And not just moving because of work, but through war? Inga and her mother have to journey half way across the world when Inga is only four years old, and she has an experience that stays with her for her whole life. Adapting to live in one country, learning the ways and making friends, only to move on again. And the place her parents call "home" is unfamiliar and possibly a little scary. This is Inga's story, well told and incredibly interesting. I can't imagine being able to deal with all the changes, but she takes it - mostly - in her stride. With her favorite doll as one constant in her life, Inga moves from West Pakistan to Peru, East Pakistan, America and Indonesia. From childhood to adulthood we see the world through her eyes, and her feelings. I really enjoyed this book, and definitely recommend it. What I didn't realize until I got to the end, was that Inga had written another memoir I read and enjoyed: Highs and Lows on the John Muir Trail is a completely different kind of story, and I was fascinated to realize she had written two such contrasting memoirs.

[Marcie Bowerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Armchair Travel the Life of a Young Expat
Inga Aksamit’s book, Between Worlds, is written with a clean, clear voice as she brings to life what she discovered, survived, and remembered as a very young child living in parts of the world that were, to most Westerners, vague spots on the map. She also depicts harrowing, brutal, and dangerous adventures from her teenage years during the Nixon era. Her real-life dramas tell us more about the households, foods, weather, sights and smells that were indelible parts of her upbringing. We learn more about her brave and adaptable parents, along with the cultural and political climates of South Asia and South America during those years.
The last chapters of this highly readable book recount how she successfully became a medical professional in California while maintaining an insatiable drive to explore. Even now, she pushes her body and mind to travel to less conventional parts of the world where optimal comfort and safety aren’t her highest priority.
The reader also gets a sampling of Inga’s personal quest to articulate her sense of belonging, her sense of home, and how being a Third Culture Kid formed her identity then as now.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her memoir Inga shares her experience of growing up as a Third Culture Kid (TCK)—a child who is raised in a culture different from their parents' and spends a significant part of their formative years in multiple countries. Inga’s father was an international engineer, and his work took him across four continents. Growing up, she lived in Japan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Peru and the United States, attending numerous schools, enduring evacuations from two countries, and facing a life-threatening illness. Constant moves made it difficult for her to form and maintain friendships, adding to her sense of displacement.

While this may sound like a grand adventure, Inga struggled with what it truly means to call a place home, grappling with questions of identity and belonging. Though her experiences made her globally aware and open-minded, she often felt like she belonged nowhere. The ending was heartfelt and moving as she uncovered the hidden traumas left by her unconventional life. It was a compelling read that held my interest throughout and was beautifully written.

[Elizabeth Bohannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Powerful, Vivid, and Deeply Moving Memoir

Inga Aksamit crafts a memoir that is both evocative and profound. With unflinching vulnerability, she invites us into the deeply personal and often unspoken realities of the Third Culture Kid (TCK) experience—of belonging everywhere and nowhere at once.

What sets this memoir apart is its raw honesty. Aksamit leans into the nuances of cultural dissonance, privilege, and self-discovery, giving readers an intimate look at what it means to be shaped by multiple worlds. Her reflections invite us to examine our own sense of place, identity, and belonging.

The survival skills she honed as a child—adapting quickly, observing rather than attaching—served her well but also resurfaced in ways she only fully understood in adulthood.

Between Worlds is for anyone who has ever felt caught between cultures, for those who love immersive travel narratives, or for readers who simply appreciate a beautifully told life story.

[Stephanie Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aksamit’s new memoir explores the impacts of being a “third culture kid,” someone who grows up overseas, moves frequently, and never feels at home anywhere. Living in West Pakistan just as the war was breaking out, traveling rough with her mother, haphazardly fleeing and leaving her father behind are just some of the unusual moments in her story. She also writes about the challenge of being the new kid at school, whether that’s in Peru and she doesn’t speak a word of Spanish to trying to assimilate into schools in the Bay Area when she doesn’t have the right clothes, name, or shared history with her classmates. Aksamit wrestles with the privilege her family had and the difficulty she felt in even naming what she went through as traumatic.

[Irene Salter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I anxiously awaited the publication of this book and it exceeded my every expectation. I'd read some of Inga's articles in the past so was really looking forward to this newest book. I knew it was going to be good, but I was blown away by her stories, both from her youth in East Pakistan and later as an adult in California and beyond. This will sound so cliche but it made me laugh and it made me cry. If you're looking for a memoir about the impact of culture on self-development, this is your book. Plus it's so timely with everything happening in Pakistan and India right now. Inga's journey of self-discovery in countries all around the globe will resonate with anyone seeking to understand their place in the world.

[Erin Van Rheenen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many books about people living abroad, but none quite as compelling as Between Worlds, and none that nail the child's point of view so well. As a child, Inga lives in so many far-flung places with her parents that when the family does return (usually briefly ) to the US, her country of birth feels at least a foreign as Pakistan or Peru to her.

The upside of seeing these places though a child's eyes is that things aren't explained, but rather evoked. The reader feels as if they are experiencing things right alongside the young Inga. And later, when an older Inga begins to question her childhood and her parents' choices, we're right there with her, discovering how her upbringing has marked her, for both good and bad.

Highly recommended!

[Ronald Mackay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between Worlds is a close, insightful and intriguing reflection on what it means to belong. It tells us of the author’s search for the security of attachment – to an extended family, a community, a country – all that we need to prove us with security, acceptance, friendship and community.

Time and again, as her father’s work as an engineer takes the family from California to the Indian sub-continent torn with strife, to Peru, Indonesia and “home” from time to time to the US, she switches schools, cities and friendships. A constant in her life is her love or reading and of striving to understand each of the societies she finds herself in. She describes these so that we can see, taste and feel them.

Inga Aksamit writes with an immediacy that captivated me.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Childhood travel

Wow, what a story, so glad she wrote it and shared it with us. From moving with her parents to countries where her dad worked that weren’t safe and had coups and wars start while they were there to hard times as the new kid in school. Not thinking of America as home as her years to teenager didn’t spend much time in the US. To finally getting her college degree while her parents continue working overseas and then trying for a relationship that would last.would she find it, would she really need to go to a medical person to help her cope? Great book, you won’t regret reading it.

[Alison Cubitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between Worlds: An Expat’s Quest for Belonging is an upping sticks/coming-of-age memoir with a difference.

Before package holidays and wide-bodied jets, international travel was the preserve of people like Inga’s parents, who earned their living abroad. Inga’s dad was an irrigation engineer, working on projects across the developing world, in countries, some of which were politically stable and others, which were so volatile, that they would be on the Do Not Travel list. It was a time of family-unfriendly employment policies, where children had to fit in around the demands of their parent’s employer and vastly different to today. This story of a child growing up in five countries, with all the upheaval that entails, trying to find their place in the world, really resonated with this reader, who belongs to that same tribe as the author—that of a Third Culture Kid.

A must-read for anyone interested in expat life memoirs and coming-of-age stories.

[Marilyn Lanier · Rating 5 out of 5]

This new memoir by Inga Aksamit, a world traveler and author of acclaimed outdoor adventure stories and books, takes the reader on a poignant and personal journey through her childhood as she navigates living abroad with her expat parents in such exotic places as Pakistan, Peru, Hong Kong, and Indonesia in the 1960s. We experience this young girl's search for security and identity as she attempts to navigate the ever-changing terrain of diverse cultures in a tumultuous time that often echoes our own cultural upheaval today. I highly recommend this riveting read!

[Ann Campanella · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a semi-expat myself, I was engrossed in Inga’s story. Not just how her family moved from one country to another, but the emotional impact it had on Inga, especially during harrowing outbreaks of war. Returning “home” was also never really home to Inga as she faced the same challenges of learning how to find her place and fit in. This memoir gives the reader a look inside one child’s experience as she grows up, traversing various cultures and discovering more about herself. An intriguing and well-written story!

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inga Aksamit captures an experience that very few Americans have the privilege of knowing. What is home? What do the rest of us take for granted? My own experience abroad came as an adult in a journey I chose. Aksamit’s began as a four year old with exceptionally adventurous parents. Learning how to cope and eventually become comfortable in two or more worlds is a true adventure. Aksamit’s labor of love opens new horizons.

HK Charlie

[Anna V. Leathers]

"Between World: An Expat's Quest for Belonging" is as much a reflection on childhood as it is a story of global exploration. Beautifully written and profoundly moving. Aksamit's reflections on love, loss, and belonging are heartfelt and profound. This memoir is a poignant reminder that home is not a place, but a feeling. A truly beautiful and enlightening memoir.

[Kellie McIntyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I was captivated by Inga's unique childhood bouncing between cultures. She does a great job portraying the cultural whiplash that she experienced. She survived things that most people who live in Western societies could never imagine, like war, inadequate medical care, and more. Highly recommend!

[Kathleen Gamble · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relatable

I enjoyed this story of self discovery. As I traveled through Inga’s world, I could relate to her adventures and traumas having lived in Asia, South America and even Oakland myself. It sounds like it all worked out very well for her in the end. I recommend it.

[Karen O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve waited too long to post my review for this gem because I enjoyed it so much I worried my review couldn’t do it justice.
But the time has come, since the Between Worlds author deserves to know she delighted yet another reader.
Inga’s life fascinated me, both for the places where her experiences overlapped mine, growing up in a country not your birthplace, moving abruptly and often, reading the same favorite books, listening to similar music, the usual girlhood challenges. But an even greater fascination I found in the stark differences, the places she lived, her experiences in times of war, and how she adapted to change.
She provided me with what I love in a memoir, the opportunity to learn about places I have never been in this big world and through the eyes of someone growing up on the heels of my own life span. In the end, I loved her attitude and spunk and could have kept reading. Her excellent writing took the tale over the top. I Highly recommend this one.

[Monique Mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between Worlds: an Expat Girls Quest for Belonging tells the story of the author's life and experiences as part of a close knit family that navigate multiple moves to different countries, including Pakistan Peru, and Indonesia. The author shares many fond memories she has from these adventures, some of which are humorous, as they are told from the perspective of a young child. However, she also acknowledge the difficulties and hardships she faced as a result. I was struck by the adventurous spirit of the parents, who, at a time when international travel was not commonplace, chose to embrace an expert life due to the fathers work The books descriptions of the places, people, and food were incredibly vivid and bring to life what these countries were like during this time. While the travel experiences were captivating, the author's honest reflections on her life were also quite touching. I really loved this book!