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

by Irena Smith

A memoir exploring family, sacrifice, and intergenerational trauma, Troika follows a life-changing road trip—equal parts humorous and soul-stirring—that will resonate with readers drawn to narratives of multigenerational healing and connection.

When three generations of women—Gen X Irena Smith, her seventy-seven-year-old mother, and her twenty-two-year-old Gen Z daughter—pile into a car for a short road trip to Solvang during a severe winter storm, their journey quickly becomes more than just a family outing. Along their travels, the three women visit an ostrich farm and an outdoor light exhibit, binge-watch the second season of White Lotus, share stories, embark on a quest for coffee, bicker, and reconcile.

Troika is a kaleidoscopic, unconventional journey through both the physical and emotional landscapes of identity, migration, and memory, swerving from heartbreak to hilarity and from Russian proverbs to internet memes. Stitching together personal history and literary odysseys, Smith explores the tangled roots of a multigenerational family, from the horrors of the second world war and a childhood escape from Soviet Russia to adolescence and motherhood in the suburbs of Silicon Valley, ultimately weaving an intimate, poignant, and darkly funny meditation on what we carry—and what we leave behind—on the journeys that shape us.

256 pages, Paperback

Expected publication 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.

[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.