The Ghosts Who Travel with Me: A Literary Pilgrimage Through Brautigan's America

by Allison Green

Curious about her enduring love for Richard Brautigan’s work, Allison Green embarks on a roadtrip tracing the route of his most famous work, Trout Fishing in America. As she travels, she examines the way we relate to the things that influence us—the ancestors who created us, the past that shaped us, the writers who changed the way we saw the world—and how these things intertwine to make us who we are. The Ghosts Who Travel With Me speaks to a forgotten generation while breaking the confines of traditional memoir.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, History

180 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2015

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a long overdue review. I read, and loved, this book almost two years ago. But better late than never.
Everything about this book will delight the avid reader, whether or not that reader loves Richard Brautigan's work. (But this reader does, very much.) The deep relationship that Green has with Trout Fishing in America--the joy of engaging so thoroughly with a book--isn't a sentimental one. She never lets the author off the hook for his misogyny, or glosses over the problems of race in the book. But she also doesn't refuse the book's merits, either. This is meditation, not critique.

But, of course, what really shines is the author's narrative, the story of her travels as framed by her relationship with Trout Fishing in America. This is a deeply intimate book, very much grounded in the author's own generous curiosity. It's like having an opportunity to travel with a smart, thoughtful friend to see things you wouldn't have, on your own, ever had the chance to see. And that, really, is what makes it so lovely.

[Jennifer D. Munro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had not read Brautigan, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying this witty, literary, captivating memoir. Then I went right out and read Trout Fishing in America and loved it, and loved the way the two books informed each other. The Ghosts Who Travel With Me is a road trip, a tip of the literary hat, the journey of a writer and feminist and human being. It's addictive reading--a fun, intelligent read that made me want to visit exotic locales, like Boise.

[Karlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine memoir of a journey across Idaho and into the soul of her teenage self through Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America.

Green doesn’t try to write like Brautigan- thankfully; his style is so idiosyncratic that doing so would be a commonplace mistake.

Green’s own life can breath here but Brautigan is the thread she uses to explore herself and Brautigan readers perhaps more widely.

[Lena Baisden-tankut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Within the first ten pages, describing her tattered copy of Trout Fishing in America and its author, Green addresses her readers and says some of us may think of Brautigan in certain terms and others of us may not know him at all. It’s true. I’m one of the latter. I didn’t know him. Instead, as a teenager, I combed through every collection of Bukowski’s writing I could get my hands on (seventy-seven at last count). When Green examines her affinity for Brautigan through the lens of an adult, a woman, a teacher, a lesbian--does her view of Brautigan change? I took Bukowski’s books and ran for the hills because, much like Green, I was a teenager with an identity crisis (well, like most teens, right?). The particular zig in my path led me to find comfort in Bukowski’s words. They made me feel not so alone. They provided examples of rejection of blind security, exploration, anarchy and uncertainty in a time when everyone around me, to my eye, appeared as if they knew the score.

As an adult now, a woman, a teacher, an advocate for equality among the spectrum of gender and sexual identities and expressions, I re-read Bukowski with a very different lens than I did two decades ago. And yet I haven’t yet parted with dozens of my poorly preserved copies of his work. I understand the nostalgia that comes with a writer impacting you profoundly and the reexamination of that relationship over time.

Green’s writing here is the perfect vehicle for carrying that nostalgia back to me as she explores her young love with Brautigan and literally retraces the writer’s steps. Her writing is crisp and lean, vivid and rich. The story unfolds in slivers, vignettes that move through time, allowing reflection and a journey.

I was moved by Green’s writing here, connecting deeply with her exploration. I’m not the only one. I bet we’ll hear stories in the coming years of readers embarking on literary pilgrimages of their own with two well-loved books in hand, Trout Fishing in America and The Ghosts Who Travel With Me.

[Dory · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ghost Who Travel With Me, like all good books, takes us off the shelf, cracks our spines, and reads aloud our insides better than we can read them ourselves. This is a book about books. Green's style is actively aware of Brautigan's influence (one of my favorite moments is Green remembering the first time she read Trout Fishing in America: "I flipped open Steno Pad #8 and began to write: 'I stopped [reading] 'On Paradise' Page 77, to see if a Big Bird toy could talk'...This was my first attempt at a Brautiganesque non sequiter."). Now, Green's style and story are her own, and both are breathtaking. A few lines that stopped me in my tracks:

On coming out in the eighties: "Your life had been folded inevitably into an oragami creature, its bends and creases suddenly recognizable as something elegant."

On the women who disappear in the stories of men: "But at twelve years old, reading Brautigan, what stayed with me were not the women in the story o the Christmas tree man, but the rivers and wild flowers drawn by the trout fishing in America nib. Now the ink seeps through the pages of the book, blotting out whole paragraphs and dripping through the friendly blurbs on the back cover."

This is a book for anyone with confusing muses, for anyone who loves Peter Pan, or Rudyard Kipling, or Richard Brautigan. It is a book about how we grapple with who and how we want to be. With idols that prickle at our values. A wonderful memoirist, Green seamlessly knits her many different stories into a cohesive, but utterly surprising conversation about, as Melanie Hoffert writes on the back cover, "how we are all shaped—and perhaps even haunted—by our earliest influences."

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up in the lovely Darvill's bookstore in the village of Eastsound on Orcas Island. Could not resist the idea of a lesbian-feminist exploring her connection to Brautigan's book, and it was a good read.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My own fascination with Richard Brautigan began with two slim paperbacks published in contrasting covers, The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster in yellow and Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt in red, that Van F. and Randy W. smuggled into Mr. Grant's physics class when we were in high school. The 1960s were long gone, and we'd finally exited the 1970s as well, but Brautigan's sparse, elegant poems captured my imagination then and still resonate with me today.

Like a Cat, Out Went Sadness
Richard Brautigan, the great American poet and sometime novelist, was as old in 1963, when I was born, as I am now. I wish he were still alive; he'd be twice as old as I am and probably twice as wise. But his special dreaming vision didn't keep him from killing himself, from putting his misery out like the cat.
Out went sadness, but there it sits, just outside the door, howling to get back in.
—I wrote this in 1992

For Allison Green, it was the short episodic novel Trout Fishing in America, Brautigan's best-known work, that inspired her to retrace his travels through Idaho, and to research and write The Ghosts Who Travel with Me. Do not let the brevity of Green's book deceive you, though. This is no offhand essay or fumbling fan fiction, but rather a work of thoroughly buttressed scholarship (published by Portland State University's own Ooligan Press, by the way), as well as a deeply felt personal memoir:

My pink paperback of Trout Fishing in America is a bearer of sacred presence, and I invest it with a meaning that is beyond its material reality. It is the wafer of my communion.
—p.138

Allison Green is the same age as I—born in 1963, that tumultuous year. We are fellow members of "Generation Jones," a term Green uses that was new to me but that immediately felt apt. We've been jonesing, pretty much our whole lives, for what we missed out on: The Sixties™, that mythical time when for a moment it appeared as if peace, love and brotherhood would take over the world.

Brotherhood, specifically—as Green observes, "All those communes, and the women were still stuck with the dishes." (p.18) Brautigan was, most definitely, a product of that time and those attitudes. The narrator of Trout Fishing in America travels with a nameless woman, and a nameless child—their real-life models are known, but not identified within the text. Green "grapples"—her word—with Brautigan's white male privilege throughout her own journey. Grappling is appropriate, though; anyone who reads Brautigan these days must be prepared to be taken aback, occasionally, by the view through his lens.

Some of that view may be due to reticence, though, rather than myopia. After all, Green's own partner and companion for The Ghosts Who Travel with Me has a name—Arline—and a history, of which we discover a little, but still not much of a speaking role—which in context seems more a matter of respect and focus than of neglect.

Let me tell you: even Moby Dick will not survive forever. Long before the earth falls into the sun 7.6 billion years from now, some librarian will come along and sweep it off the shelf.
—p.134

The Ghosts Who Travel with Me is written very much like a Brautigan book. It flows like a Brautigan book, its short chapters rich in wry observation. That's not surprising. Brautigan's writing is distinctive and relatively easy to imitate. What is surprising is how well Allison Green manages to evoke Brautigan's style without descending into pastiche.

I still find sentences so resonant it's as if they have been living inside me since I first read them.
—p.133

Richard Brautigan has written all he's ever going to write. Maybe, though, we'll be lucky enough to get more from Allison Green.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book and didn't put it down until I was finished. Within moments, Allison Green had transported me into her memories, her road trip, and her fascination with a book I had never read and an author I had barely heard of. The beautiful stories of her childhood, woven with spectacularly crafted panoramas of a trip through Washington and Idaho, and vivid descriptions of people and places, some personal, some historical, engaged and enthralled me from cover to cover. Green's longing, almost palpable throughout, for a sense of belonging—to a generation, to a place, to a social or literary movement—pulls out an ache that never quite outgrows its place in teenaged minds and hearts. Simultaneously, her struggle to integrate her nostalgic love for Brautigan with an investigation of his problematic nature as a man and a writer is relatable for anyone who has created a hero for themselves only to later discover human flaws within. Intriguing, beautifully descriptive, and ultimately forgivable, Green's journey, both literal and literary, weaves together the parts of ourselves that are loveable and uncomfortable in a book that left me feeling like I saw something new.

[Rachel H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Richard Brautigan is the ghost it's interesting.

Green was born on the cusp of two generations. As the Baby Boomers were ending and the Lost Generation was beginning, Green came into this world wishing she was a little older. She wasn't old enough to be in the thick of the sixties and carries a nostalgia for something she just missed. She stumbled on Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America as a young girl and was mesmerized. Green goes on a soul-searching pilgrimage, retracing Brautigan's journey through Idaho. Don't expect a revelation, there isn't one. Green has no realizations on the page. She spends more of her time looking back and wishing for what might have been, rather than looking forward. However, her beautiful prose and perfectly placed Brautigan quotes make it a fun read. The reason for Green's obsession with Brautigan is never truly uncovered and left to the reader's imagination.

I think this is a book about freedom. Freedom to be who you are, love who you love, desire what you desire, and admire who you admire. Because of this, Green eloquently captures the essence of the sixties counterculture movement after all.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This delightful book is a double-helix of trips down memory-lane. Both involve the author revisiting her childhood, but one is literary and the other geographical. And both are wonderfully told. Green is thoughtful and contemplative in remembering a favorite childhood author: Richard Brautigan. Upon finding the old copy of Trout Fishing in America as an adult, Green reflects upon the issues she has as an adult with the books misogynistic leanings. Through her reflections she concludes that “at twelve years old, reading Brautigan, what stayed with me were […] the rivers and wildflowers drawn by the trout fishing in America nib.” And Brautigan’s journey takes the author to places where her parents and grandparents lived as children. The weaving of family history, childhood memories, and literary travel and musings makes for an enjoyable read.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in literary journeys, memoirs about the Pacific Northwest, or learning a bit about an interesting writer of the Beat Generation.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the last century when I was in high school someone discovered Richard Brautigan (okay, it was definitely Leith). I probably understood nothing but was mesmerized nonetheless. Until then we'd been fed (at school) a steady diet of Hawthorne and Melville. Now it's half a century (nearly) later and I live on the west coast! I've been to (through) Idaho. I have friends in Boise. I know (by acquaintance only) Allison Green. And on the night before her father's memorial last May she read for my reading series a piece that included her absolutely remarkable father. I began reading the book that night (see, I already from the library. I had the intention). I loved this book. I knew my friend who lives in Boise would need to read it (and she's gay and can confirm Green's partner's take on life there). I loved journeying with Allison as I suspect we're close enough in age that the questions she now had about his portrayal of women are ones I would have on re-reading. No matter, it seems I'd go on any journey with Allison's writing.

[Terence Brierly · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's interesting how the writings of a complete stranger can empower or have power over us, even if we might disagree or not understand what was even trying to be said. Allison Green's memoir, The Ghosts Who Travel With Me, explores this phenomenon by detailing Green's complex relationship with the famous Richard Brautigan. Green embarks on a pilgrimage of sorts, a gay, feminist writer retracing the steps of another wordsmith, one who portrays women with an uncomfortable apathy that challenges critics to this day.
Allison Green's writing is deeply moving, perfectly portraying that sense of nostalgia we all feel when re-exploring old tomes and old ideas we no longer hold dear. This book is perfect for those who grew up following the example of flawed heroes, ones that eventually let us down but remain integral to who we are. Green specifically explores gender roles here, and about the dubious portrayals of women that she first overlooked, and later learned to accept.
I suppose, more than anything, this is a book about loving books, and about the many, many ways we can interact and learn from them. If that premise sounds at all interesting to you, I recommend you pick this up immediately.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allison Green's journey of self-discovery translates seamlessly onto the written page. As a reader, I felt transported by her words and identified quite deeply with her struggle to reconcile love of a writer with her own identity, which stands in such stark contrast to the writings he composed. A well-written, unique, and powerful memoir, with a strong queer-identified author, The Ghosts Who Travel With Me comes with my highest recommendation. For its representation, its subtleties, its writing style, and its passion, this memoir is a staple for any true literary collection.

[Heather Durham · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don’t need to be familiar with Richard Brautigan to enjoy this literary road memoir. For anyone who seeks to make sense of mixed feelings about a gifted but controversial artist, this book will resonate. Green explored Brautigan’s Idaho as others have explored Thoreau’s Massachusetts or Abbey’s Utah—grappling with the intertwining of writing and author, and pondering how we might have been shaped by and needing to distance ourselves from different aspects of both in our own writing journeys.

[Hyacinth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was born in 1963 as the author. I have never heard of Brautigan. A couple things made me nod. Because of the time period, I could relate to some of what she shared. I suppose I would feel that way about my favorite singer and pay homage. I'd like to visit there places of life and imagine the emotions, etc. Other than that, it was just okay. Funny thing is I couldn't put it down until I finished it. It was very well written, and that I liked.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jones Generation

The author followed in the steps of Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America) and ended up connecting with her own past and aspirations for her future. It was easy for me to relate since I am also a member of the "Jones Generation" (born near the end of the Boomer Generation).

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the woven storyline.

[Leigh Kaisen]

In her literary pilgrimage-centered memoir, The Ghosts Who Travel with Me, Allison Green explores the landscapes of Richard Brautigan, the author who impacted her most, as well as her own landscape of ancestry and personal histories. Following the path of Brautigan’s best known novel, Trout Fishing in America, Green and her partner Arline road trip from Washington to Idaho, retracing the steps of Brautigan’s narrator, who travels with a family much like his own, lending the Trout Fishing fiction an autobiographical lens.

Not familiar with Brautigan myself—(born too late, to reference Green’s recognition of Brautigan’s initially generational fame)—I became familiar with the voice of an author I have not read: his succinct, metaphorical and satirical writing style, often contrasting the great outdoors with American materialism and culture (“a creek is narrow like a line of telephone booths, and another is like a department store”). In many cases, his narrative distance is somehow right up next to the nearness of his words.

In a similar vein, Green’s writing is often succinct in observation, although not lacking beauty in description. From her family tree, to coming of age, to the objects and places we declare to hold meaning for us, Green glimpses her pilgrimage through a wide-angle lens, not only focusing on Brautigan, but on her own story that has brought her to this point. Green extends her own questions to larger wonderings of the collective “we”—offering tokens of symbolism, such as her grandmother’s bracelets or a faded, well-loved paperback, that beg to discover a broader context: “But isn’t that what readers do? We conjure our own writers of the books we love. We travel with them, argue with them, kiss them, turn away from them only to turn back and sigh in nostalgia over what they—and we—once were.”

The romantic reader in me hoped for a bigger build, a strong sense of author attachment laced with a bit of mystery, perhaps, all leading up to a defining burst of recognition. However, the author herself is aware she’s “more interested in sentences and paragraphs than in narrative momentum.” As a reader, I can be very patient, content with quiet narratives that follow language more than plot. Admittedly, though, sometimes I want both. Still, The Ghosts Who Travel with Me is a worthwhile wandering along a reader’s road, stopping along the way to consider what we leave behind, and what holds lasting power enough to remain with us.

[Vi La Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ghosts Who Travel with Me by Allison Green is reminiscent of that uncomfortable first date we’ve all had with the chronic over-sharer. It comes across as infinitely sad, but we are not sure why. We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the deep-seated tragedy to come to light. But there is not one. The gloomy mood hovers on the horizon like the Sawtooth Mountains.

We do not really know Green—that is, the narrator—since we have been introduced to her in the middle of a conversation with a side character we never see again. Yet, we are instantly plunged into vignette after vignette of her innocent—dare I say, kitschy—childhood. The diary entry. The séance. The tears shed to the Beatles. Each moment is treated with a coy, almost reverent reticence. Imagine sitting through a brand new acquaintance’s album of half-faded and embarrassingly revealing baby pictures. “Everyone thought I was adorable back then, but oh, I don’t know. What do you think?”

Perhaps this approach would have worked better, had it not been juxtaposed against a perpetual, caustic overtone of self-righteousness. The narrator’s parents marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr; the narrator herself marched with the ranks of the LGBTQ in an attempt for social recognition; her partner, Arlene, is from Panama, a racial distinction that is made multiple times for no specific reason; she talks back to FOX News in hotel lobbies; hippies were sexist. She is progressive.

There were some good moments. While the descriptions of the routes she and Arlene took got a little laborious in places, her description of the “Highway Map of Vacation Land” was both poignant and humorous. The interaction between the rancher and his wife was heartwarming, and the moment when the narrator imagines Brautigan at the picnic table with his typewriter moved me as a fellow book lover who idolized the authors of her childhood.

Unfortunately, there was just too much self-aware navel-gazing to make this the glistening commentary on generational gaps and counterculture it truly could have been. It was nice enough to sit through, a good use for an otherwise boring evening, but I admit to calling for the check a bit eagerly, just to get away from the table. I will not be calling for a second date.

[Allegra Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

To start off, I must say that "The Ghost Who Travel with Me" is a good ole romp for any young adult. Green effectively captures the feelings of self exploration and self reflection within her relatively short book. While the premise of the book seems simple enough--a road trip through Idaho--one often wonders what exactly the climax of this narrative will be. The thing is, there seems that just like the road she travels on, Green's journey comes off as a flat line. That is not to say it isn't good. In fact, the witty humor and references to her childhood and journey through life so far is anything but boring. There are quite a few instances that fill the reader with nostalgia of days past gone such as the childhood wonder of conducting a seance to contact the dead during a slumber party. Then there is the beautiful part where Green recalls how she and her cousin Jude used to write each other love letters and pretend they were from their actor crushes. That part in particular made me feel like calling up my best friend and recommending this tale to read.

Yet even with these wonderful moments, it felt like the whole book was taking place rather flatly. But I suppose I should have expected such a thing about a tale where the journey is the focus--both her literal and personal. Or perhaps I had been more familiar with Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America" I'd have more connection with how Green felt as she followed in the footsteps along her journey with Arline (a woman of whom I sadly have little opinion as save for a few excerpts and a short chapter, I do not feel to know further than Green's companion and girlfriend).

Still, despite the lack of levels in the book, I found it to be enjoyable none the less. It invokes so many personal feelings--of being on the road, of connecting with that one book or author, of remembering your childhood and how you came to be who you are--it's all there. It's all effective, and Green's writing is delightful to read. So is "The Ghost Who Travel with Me" one of my favorites? Well, probably not, but it's a great book to read on a rainy day or in the backseat of a car on a road trip to Idaho.

[E]

Despite never having read Brautigan, The Ghosts Who Travel With Me by Allison Green feels familiar. I felt completely at home in Green’s narrative as I followed her on her literary pilgrimage through Idaho. The book filled me with comfortable feelings: the love of the road trip, the longing to be born in a different generation, and the creation of reverence for a space only sacred to you, all wonderful sentiments that I too have experienced.

That being said, I would have surely appreciated the book more had I an intimate knowledge of Trout Fishing in America. Green’s connection to Brautigan’s work leads her on two road trips to retrace his steps. And we often feel as though we are belted snugly into the backseat of her car as she and Arline drive on the endless highways. It is clear that Arline’s role in this story is that of the “Woman Who Travels With Her”, as she has almost no dialogue, and her only character development is that of a Panamanian who is afraid of white supremacists.

Another tribute to Brautigan was the often short, jumpy sentences and sections that form their way into the cohesive story. Despite its sometimes random order, the narrative is clear and interesting. The only piece that bothered me was that Green—that is, the narrator—repeatedly delves off into family history that is a bit too tangential for my taste.

Unfortunately, there was little in the way of denouement. I hoped for some kind of conclusive message. A personal revelation, a lesson on environmental activism, even more social commentary would have sufficed. In the end, the emotion just petered out, much like arriving home after a long road trip and finding nothing—even yourself—has changed.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A too-young-to-be-a-baby-boomer, too-old-to-be-a-millennial woman nostalgic for her childhood takes a literary trip to follow Richard Brautigan's path through Idaho while he was writing Trout Fishing in America. Allison Green, a lesbian and self-described hippie who just missed the Flower Power era, finds herself in Idaho, home of the Aryan Nation, with her Panamanian partner, following the paths of an author she was intrigued by as a girl but who never gave the women in his stories much more than names--and sometimes not even that much. It was intriguing to read how she talks about her journey from a self-conscious girl to a well-rounded and grounded feminist and progressive woman, more sure of herself, and how that change led her to wonder about her juvenile obsession with an author who is often described as chauvinistic. She explains part of it as a generational thing, and how growing up as part of "Generation Jones" (always jonesing for something more), really shaped who she was. The meandering narrative goes from childhood memories of feeling she belonged to an earlier era to teenage insecurities, first jobs and first girlfriends, and moves across the US with her trip to Boise and Idaho campsites with her partner while in her late 40s. In the end, Green doesn't come to much of a big revelation about Brautigan and her relationship to him, other than a lovely sentiment that the literary loves of our past become our ancestors just as much as our great-grandparents are, and that exploring their lives and the places they've been can be just as satisfying and self-relevatory as returning to an ancestral home. In Green's book, as in all roadtrips, the journey is the most important part, not the destination.

[T. J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allison Green’s The Ghosts Who Travel With Me: A Literary Pilgrimage Through Brautigan’s America is a beautifully written story that travels further through time than it does through space.

The central narrative follows the author as she and her romantic partner go on a literary pilgrimage from Seattle to Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, which decades ago served as the inspiration for Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. The narrator felt a strong connection with Brautigan as a thirteen-year-old girl, and though her literary tastes have sharpened since then, she still feels a fondness for Brautigan and his novella.

The title suggests that the story chronicles a “pilgrimage,” which it does, but the bulk of the story wanders through the author’s past, where we meet her ancestors, or “ghosts.” With short vignettes that feel just a rock skip away from prose poetry, Green explores her hippie-infused childhood, her discovery of her homosexuality, the proper way to cook trout, and many other aspects of her life that give the story color.

Though I’m not familiar with Brautigan’s work, I don’t feel like my ignorance hampered my enjoyment of this book; still, fans (or ambivalent fans, like Green) would doubtless enjoy the book even more. There’s plenty of humor, as the narrator suggests she and her girlfriend have sex in a hot spring to make the memoir more thrilling; plenty of danger, as the author dodges the threats of bears and Aryan Nation; and plenty of heart, as Green recounts her difficult journey not just through Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, but through her ever-moving life. The book is a quick and pleasant read; Green’s prose is effortlessly poignant and profound. I would recommend Ghosts to anyone.

[Ryan Brewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ghosts Who Travel With Me is a truly authentic memoir. A memoir that’s not afraid to embrace an ambivalent protagonist, not afraid to remember events out of order, and not afraid to leave questions unanswered. Life is full of ambiguity and imperfections, and Allison Green proves that there is beauty and solace to be had in accepting that. This memoir, in all of its moments of uncertainty, remains fearless.

Green’s literary pilgrimage is evidence that life isn’t always about answers, but experience. She sees herself as a member of a displaced generation, is unsure of her idols, and is searching for an America that she’s not even sure exists. While retracing the steps of Richard Brautigan’s Troutfishing in America, she attempts to reconcile her own feminism with the author’s infamous sexism, all the while contemplating her own origins within the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Whether or not Green ever finds any resolution becomes less and less important as we learn to just enjoy our time in our own skin, wherever and whenever we are. The Ghosts Who Travel With Me is funny, honest storytelling that charts a journey we can all relate to, in an America that can be anything, and will let you know that you are not alone in your indecision.

[Maeko · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ghosts Who Travel With Me is a raw and honest memoir. After discovering a strange connection/ re-connection to Richard Brautigan, Allison Green and her partner Arline follow the trail — from Washington to Idaho — that Brautigan narrates in his novel Trout Fishing in America. In a journey of self-discovery, Green uncovers that discovering the self is also defined by by our past, our ancestors, and how moments in time define the characters we become.

Although I'm not familiar with Brautigan's work, Green connects the reader to Brautigan through her own writing. Green's style of writing and ability to describe her surroundings made me want to jump in a car and follow along in her adventures — and not because I am inclined to discover Brautigan as an author, but because Green reveals what that kind of road trip can do for the soul. Ultimately, I guess I was waiting for the build-up and big finish of a grand self-defining moment for Green, but that is simply not her writing style. As an author she seems to focus more on the craft and placement of each word/sentence. In that way, I am inclined to appreciate Green even more. The Ghosts Who Travel With Me is a worthwhile read, one that is all the better read in the wilderness.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allison Green is skillful in building naturally beautiful scenes, drawing the reader into her thought processes, and thoughtfully critiquing the works of one of her favorite authors. I loved the scenes where she was introducing her partner Arline to places that were special to her, such as an old pioneer graveyard, as well as the meaningful landmarks from Brautigan's books.

The three-star rating is partially based on my feelings about Brautigan himself, and partially based on the (likely purposeful) discomfort I felt when reading this book as I was asked to sympathize with many of Green's own insecurities. I sympathized with her feeling of being born "between" generations, as well as her own ambivalence to Brautigan's misogyny, due to the fact that I am a fan of some problematic authors myself.

All I really knew about Brautigan was filtered through men who glorified him, Kerouac, and other beat-generation writers. Convincing me to be enthusiastic about him was an uphill battle, and ultimately didn't quite work out.

[Margaret Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child of an avid reader and a baby boomer, I spotted Brautigan’s The Abortion among my mother’s books and wondered about the couple featured on the cover. I never opened the pages to peek inside, as my mother’s books remained my mother’s and I was trying to forge my own literary pathway. It does stand out in my mind though, as something curious, as a relic from my mother’s time. It wasn’t until I happened upon The Ghosts Who Travel With Me that I thought about Brautigan again. And while I’m not sure that I’ll ever take the time to read Brautigan, I found Green’s wrestling with his work to be nuanced and very interesting. Sometimes we love things and we don’t know why, and sometimes we love things and then, upon further reflection, we realize that we don’t. I think Ghosts is very compelling at illuminating this thread and I enjoyed her geographical retracing, as I grew up in Northern Idaho, and was familiar with many of the places she mentioned. All-in-all, I enjoyed this book immensely.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Green has a very strong voice for this type of book, the memoir style writing that takes readers on a journey of traveling with the author back to her childhood home while also following the road of Richard Brautigan. I appreciated the history of the author as she reflected on growing up in rural Idaho as a queer feminist and how different her life was compared to the rest of her family and reconciling that with her current life. I really loved the thread of Brautigan's history and his work throughout Green's story and the parallels and comparison's she expressed as well. Green's writing style is clear, direct, reflective, and even nostalgic. I loved her story overall and being able to learn about her experiences in a time when things were less accepted than they are today and how she found strength in her own identity through the literature. I feel as though I would have had a much deeper appreciation of the book if I was more familiar with Brautigan's work. As it is, I felt like the book was still very strong on it's own, even without that knowledge.

[Matt Love · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I thought the book was going to be about Brautigan. Seems that was just something the publisher bigged up, because he hardly makes an appearance. It gives the impression that she was going to retrace his steps, but she only goes to one place he went and then it's "back to me." a couple of years later she goes to one more, writes a couple of lines about it, and then it was "back to me" again. I just didn't find her interesting enough to make up for the absence of the largely forgotten witty writer/real life monster that was Richard Brautigan. Fortunately, the author footnotes a couple of books that might deliver more of what I was looking for: "You can't catch death" by his daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, and Jubilee Hitchhiker by William Hjortsberg.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book on Goodreads. I was unsure of where this story would lead me, perhaps if I had read Richard Brautigan I would have enjoyed the journey more. It was very well written as I was sent parasailing through a childhood along with her grandmothers funeral and then college. It is true that no matter where we plan on heading we have a tendency to pull our past along along with us. The story maintains this theory and brings to light many changes people experience going through life.