Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip

by Irena Smith

A lyrical, artfully woven memoir in which a short road trip to California’s Central Coast becomes an epic journey through family history, loss, and connection.

When three generations of women—a middle-aged narrator, her seventy-seven-year-old mother, and her twenty-two-year-old Gen Z daughter—set out for a quick trip to California's Central Coast, what begins as a road trip soon transforms into something far richer: a modern-day Odyssey. Over the course of three days, the three women brave a severe winter storm, encounter ravenous ostriches, walk through an enchanted light exhibit, binge-watch White Lotus, hunt for coffee with plant-based milk, bicker, reconcile, and share stories.

Troika braids the narrative of a three-day road trip with the longer strands of migration, memory, and motherhood, creating a layered meditation on distance traveled—geographic, generational, and emotional. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey that traverses the landscapes of identity and family history and stretches from the horrors of the second world war and an escape from Soviet Russia to adolescence and motherhood in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. As the narrative swerves from heartbreak to hilarity, from Homeric detours and Russian proverbs to internet memes, it weaves together an intimate, poignant, and darkly funny meditation on how we get from where we were to where we are—and what we carry with us along the way.

Editorial reviews

“Smith’s prose is a crisp delight—at turns funny, warm, grim, sad, and joyous.” —The BookLife Prize

“. . . [a] charming, bittersweet memoir . . .” —Publishers Weekly

“Lures you in with a road trip and delivers a meditation on all the incidental, mysterious ways we become who we are.” —Sasha Vasilyuk, author of California Book Award winner Your Presence Is Mandatory

“Heartfelt, moving, and, oh yes, very, very funny!” —Alina Adams, New York Times best-selling author of The Nesting Dolls and Go On Pretending

“In a voice at once fiercely honest and exquisitely tender, Smith explores what we inherit from our foremothers, what we pass down to our daughters, and the power we hold to forge new stories together. Like the best of road trips, Troika winds through shimmering vistas and surprising detours, delivering us, ultimately, to the possibilities that lie in our hearts. A wholly delightful journey from beginning to end.” —Nicole Graev Lipson, USA Today best-selling author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

“At its heart... a meditation on intergenerational legacies, memories of a left-behind homeland, and how coincidences stitch our lives together.” —Elizabeth Rynecki, author of Chasing Portraits, documentary filmmaker, and podcaster

“Troika is a triumph. Smith deftly weaves her Russian upbringing, mythology, and motherhood into a tight, funny, and, at times, heartrending tale that will change any reader who goes along for the ride.” —Jen Murphy Parker, author of Fault Line Boy

Genres: Nonfiction, Jewish, Memoir

256 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2026

About the author

Irena Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir, The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays and the forthcoming Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip. Her obsession with how words work began early (as a child growing up in Soviet Russia, she was known to occasionally stand on furniture and recite Pushkin poems). After emigrating to the United States with her parents and swearing up and down that she would never learn to speak English, she went on to earn a PhD in Comparative Literature and taught literature and writing at UCLA and Stanford before transitioning to college admissions work and writing.

Irena currently writes two Substacks—Personal Statements and The Curmudgeon’s Guide to College Admissions—and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she enjoys eavesdropping on conversations in public places, complaining about traffic, and championing the Oxford comma at every opportunity.

Reviews

[Shelby Lehman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not just a story of a 3 day road trip. It contains short stories of Irena’s and her family’s path to get to where they are now. Fascinating history of Russian Jewish refugees to the 80’s Silicon Valley boom to present day. So interesting. Irena’s snark, wit, and love of languages and words oozes out of every short story.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. The writing style was different from books I have read and I appreciated the short chapters (journal entries). I could relate to many of the stories and experiences in this memoir! Just shows you how similar we all really are to each other! I have always told my children that life is a journey there are no straight paths and no right or wrong paths! So I encourage them to enjoy the journey they are on! Thanks for sharing your story!

[Mary Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Troika and the dynamic between the three generations of women bonding on a journey. From such difficult beginnings overcome and still overcoming life’s twists and turns. Just read my friend a passage that spoke to me as I continue to raise my own children. “ the families I worked with were unraveling too, just in different ways. Sleep-deprived students full of self-doubt, parents anguished over the possibility that their child might not get into the right schools, worrying that they hadn’t done enough, or that they had done too much, or that whatever they did wasn’t good enough.” Irena Smith I was touched by your note accompanying my book. Thank you for sharing your journey.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ADORED Troika. It only took me a day and a half to read because I didn't want to put it down. It’s the story of a roadtrip taken by Smith, her mother, and her twenty-two-year-old daughter to California’s Central Coast, a journey which happens to begin during an atmospheric river event that turns the freeway into an ocean. As Smith and her fellow travelers navigate the torrential rain and other hazards, they also navigate the choppy waves of parenthood, daughterhood, cultural identity, and family legacy. The result is an utterly unique and captivating book.

I’ve read Smith’s excellent memoir The Golden Ticket, and it was such a treat to lose myself in her writing again. Some moments are laugh-out-loud funny and others are so raw in their honesty and vulnerability. Although the short (and compulsively readable) chapters weave back and forth in time, Smith is such a nimble narrator that the reader follows effortlessly along. Another thing I loved about this book was its description of California’s Central Coast, including towns like Paso Robles, Los Olivos (made famous in the movie Sideways) and Solvang. But although the physical stops on this journey are memorably drawn, it’s the emotional stops that stay with me. Every person on this trip is changed by the end of it … and the reader is, too.

Many thanks to the publisher for an advance reader copy. This is a gem of a book.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Troika, Smith goes, with her mother and grown daughter, from Palo Alto to Paso Robles and back, a meandering 175-miles or so each way. But she also goes from the terror of the pogroms to the pressures of the pandemic and Palo Alto High School. She goes from the oceans and mazes of The Odyssey to the beaches and cliffs of Sicily in White Lotus. She shows that it doesn’t take a long or arduous (although arguably any multigenerational family road trip is arduous in its way) journey to write a good road trip story. She so deftly explores and intertwines her family history, pop culture, and mythology, that you are accompanying them on this journey, too, invested in their search for delicious baked goods and properly-made coffee drinks, and even more in her family story, the earlier migrations that reverberate unpredictably into the present day. Troika’s chapters unfurl, propulsive and wry and poignant, keeping you reading like you’re on the best road trip, eager to discover what’s around the corner.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weaving 21st century un-classical culture (tv, plant-based milk, LED light shows), with 20th century antisemitic horror, laced with Russian linguistic expressiveness, and adding classical Homeric storytelling, the classics rise as the universal lesson or guide through the life of 3 generations of women on a 3-day car trip. Thoroughly enjoyable read of relationships, family history and the drama of modern American life among the Haves of Silicon Valley. It doesn’t hit you over the head, but pokes you in the ribs so you can laugh at our foibles. Odysseus was an imperfect hero, but so are the survivors of pogroms and the Final Solution, and so are we, the spoiled beneficiaries of abundance who must tackle age-old human problems.

[Gretchen Staebler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful read! "Troika" is a brilliant braid of the present, the past, the farther past. (Along with other strands.) All woven while on a three-generation road trip. I enjoyed it as thoroughly as I did the author's previous book, "The Golden Ticket." "...the past rolls in and the car fills with clamorous ghosts. The ghosts want to be part of the story. If I don't let them in, the story becomes a travelogue." It is so very much more.